We love our seniors, though

"We love our seniors and we can do so much more for them," says LaToya Cantrell in these Facebook ads right before she asks you to vote against a millage funding their services. The tax failed yesterday thanks, in part, to ads like that one paid for by Cantrell's PAC, Action New Orleans. The PAC spent over $20,000 on this one ballot issue garnering the attention of *checks notes* 6.7% of the electorate.  Nonetheless, the result will be counted as a sweeping victory for the mayor and the political machine she is building. The electoral "win" just ahead of the legislative session should be good for the mayor's clout as she continues to pursue her grand bargain with the heads of local tourism agencies. It will also be described as a "win" for the mayor over a defiant City Council who put this proposal on the ballot in spite of her objections.

The mayor invested so much in denying funding to the Council on Aging and other organizations who provide essential services to the seniors she loves because she says... well because BGR tells her to say... those organizations are not sufficiently "accountable" to the public. They may have a point in the abstract. But it rings hollow when, in next month's election, the mayor is supporting dedicated money for the private clubs who operate Audubon, City Park and NORD as insufficiently "accountable" fiefdoms themselves. Also, we could point out (and we have) that the deal she is hammering out with the tourism agencies preserves their unaccountable access to dedicated public funds. What explains Cantrell's selective application of this "accountability" line of criticism?

My best guess is this is basically about patronage. LaToya and BGR support the money that goes to their friends and supporters while opposing money City Council members might distribute to non-profits and church groups with different loyalties and interests.

Looking through the contributors to Action New Orleans, we find several names tied to the agencies and interests Cantrell is moving to protect. There are current and former Audubon board members, people with ties to the Superdome Commission and the Convention Center as well as tourism and real estate connections. Joe Jaeger, whose hotel project is at the center of the supposed "clash" between Cantrell and the Convention Center, contributed $2,500. Prominent Airbnb lobbyist Eric Bay gave $250.  A plan to normalize short term rentals as a permanent revenue source is also said to be part of the pending deal.

We'll wait to see how all that plays out.  News on the deal is expected this week.  Hopefully when our media commentators write their predictably glowing praise of the "compromise" ending, they'll mention somewhere that everyone involved in the deal was on the same side all along.  In the meantime, Orleans Parish seniors who rely on Meals On Wheels and similar programs will have to wait a bit longer for the mayor to decide whether or not anyone is going to feed them.  She does love them, though. 

Happy Too Many Elections Day

Hey look Stephanie Grace is on her soap box again.

Having two separate elections doubles the cost, creates confusion and possibly fatigue among voters, and very likely pushes turnout for each one lower than it might otherwise be.

Louisiana, simply put, allows for too many elections. Consider this silly scenario just one more example of why.

Are you guys fatigued?  Frankly, I think it's been far too long since we've voted on something.  I was starting to get bored.  Mardi Gras ended weeks ago. LSU just got knocked out of the NCAA tournament. The Pelicans have been out of contention for a while now. Sure, Jazzfest is coming. But every year it gets harder and harder to pretend that Jazzfest doesn't suck.  We need something to do.  Let's go "make our voices heard" or whatever.

I have no idea why Grace hates democracy as much as she does. But it's almost every election day that we find her complaining about how confused or fatigued we poor plebeian voters must be trying to get our heads around all this weighty policy stuff.  She's probably just trying to help but it does come off as a little condescending after a while. In Orleans Parish, there's only one item on the ballot this weekend. I'm pretty sure we can figure this out.

Voters on Saturday will have the chance to approve or reject a 2 mil property tax that should generate a little over $6 million a year for senior services in New Orleans.  Primarily this would benefit the Council On Aging's capacity to provide at home care for seniors through the Meals on Wheels and Homemaker programs. Funding for these services typically relies on state money as well as private and federal grants. But those sources have become less consistent as budgets have been shifted around in Baton Rouge and in Washington in recent years leading to an emergency situation described here by Councilman Williams' communications director.

Every night there are seniors in New Orleans going to bed hungry. Though hundreds of older adults are fed each week by the New Orleans Council on Aging, 1,300 are on the waiting list to receive a delivered meal. In a city of rising costs, many homebound seniors, already on a fixed income, have described how they ration their plate of food from Meals on Wheels to make it last for the whole day. Hundreds more are on the waiting list for the Homemaker Program, which provides housekeeping and chore assistance, a service that for some is the difference between aging in place and leaving their beloved home.

Mayor Cantrell would prefer we hold off on helping, though. She has spent the last few weeks waving around a report from the Bureau of Governmental Research which calls into question the "accountability" process for disbursing dedicated funds to private non-profits like the Council On Aging as well as the churches, and community groups it contracts with.

I have some sympathy for this argument.  Complaining about the web of private clubs, NGOs, fundraisers, and business jerks who function as an informal quasi-government in New Orleans has long been a hobby horse here at the Yellow Blog.  Another thing we've noticed, though, has been the way the fundraisers, club members, and business jerks who comprise the membership at BGR like to pick and choose which of these grifts to criticize and which to sanction. Thanks to the fact that we have "too many elections" in Louisiana, a perfect example of this selective criticism arrives in a little over a month.

On May 4, voters will be asked to continue Audubon's entitlement to dedicated tax revenue for 20 years. To most people, subsidizing Ron Forman's six figure salary might seem like a worse use of public funds than propping up Meals On Wheels. Voters rejected Audubon's proposed 50 year extension only a few years ago. So this time, Audubon is asking to share our wealth with the club members and fundraisers who operate City Park, as well as the club members and fundraisers who operate the semi-privatized NORD. A fourth slice of the pie is being offered to the city's Parks and Parkways department.

As the only fully public agency in the group, Parks and Parkways is the only entity here that should pass BGR's "accountability" test for dedicated revenue. City Park is a state entity but it is mostly operated by private non-profiteers and will continue that way. NORD is operated as a series of public-private partnerships. BGR hasn't criticized the Audubon proposal the way it has gone after the Council on Aging, though.

Meanwhile, the mayor has publicly campaigned for the Audubon millage while her PAC has spent $20,000 trying to defeat the Council On Aging. She's definitely made a choice. And since Cantrell never seems to disagree with BGR about anything (what's up with that, by the way) we can assume no critical report about Audubon is forthcoming from them.

The same sorts of structural critiques could apply to either millage but Cantrell is backing one and not the other. The key difference probably has something to do with whose hands the questionably "accountable" money passes through before it reaches its intended purpose.  Some of those hands are friendlier to LaToya/BGR than others. Anyway they're choosing to feed Boysie Bollinger's lions before they feed needy seniors. I'm sure they have their reasons.

Voters may feel differently, though.  Luckily we have "too many elections" so they can let us know about that.

This will solve everything

City Council finally passed that inclusionary zoning ordinance everyone has been pulling their hair out over for years now. It's not very good for all of the reasons we've been pulling our hair out over trying to explain for years now. It's a trickle-down strategy to give away favors to developers on the condition that they "set aside" a little bit for us.  Of course, it doesn't produce enough affordable housing sufficient to meet the actual need. The fact that housing advocates had to fight as hard as they did just to get it tells us just how badly off they are in their pursuits. The only reason it's even happening now is because legislature is threatening to remove it from the table of options.

Developers said (Inclusionary zoning) would kill new development in the city. They persuaded state lawmakers to strip local governments of the right to implement the concept.

Gov. John Bel Edwards intervened with a veto last year. But he told Orleans and other urban parishes to pass rules implementing the idea before the Legislature reconvenes this year or he would let the ban on inclusionary zoning become law.

Still this policy is essentially tokenism. The net effect is we will have built more nice things for rich people but  the mayor and council have an excuse for that in that they can claim to have done an "affordable housing" thing in the process.  That and they got to hire some consultants to tell them about it in the meantime. They like that too. 

Wastelands

This Advocate story is from earlier in the month but the legislative session is about to begin and, since we're going to be arguing a lot about budgets, I thought it would be a good time to flag it. As I'm sure everyone knows, the Republican gambit this time around is to pretend the revenue generated through last year's interminable seeming series of special sessions does not, in fact exist. Which would mean the Governor's proposed budget is invalid. Which would then mean we could end up haggling over whether or not we're even going to have a budget at the end of the session. Which would mean... here we go again.

Anyway that's all just background. The story I wanted to share concerns the budget crunch experienced by a growing number of rural municipalities across Louisiana as population shifts toward larger cities and support from the dysfunctional state government continues to erode. And so to make up the difference, the towns police people harder.

The number of Louisiana towns, villages and small cities in which fines make up at least half their revenues has risen from 15 in 2007 to more than 25 in 2018, according to a review by The Advocate of annual state audits of local finances.

For 60 other municipalities, fines and forfeitures account for more than 30 percent of government revenues. That’s up from 28 in 2007.

And 194 of the state’s 304 incorporated cities, towns and villages raise more in fines and forfeitures than they do in property taxes, according to latest financial audits.

The reason is less Barney Fife passionately holding scofflaws to account for minor infractions and more small-town officers strictly enforcing traffic laws — issuing tickets costing $80 to $200 or more — that has the added benefit of bringing more money to municipalities with few other revenue-raising options.

According to this article there are 24 localities that derive over half of their revenue from fees and fines.  The conflict of interest with fair and equitable law enforcement is obvious. And there doesn't appear to be a ready solution forthcoming from the legislature.

Oh no, Cousin Ken

So close to putting all this behind him and yet...

Court records show that Landrieu tried and failed to prove to the court that he completed his mandated 100 hours of community service through a non-profit run by his mother Phyllis, a former School Board member.

The judge ordered him to enter the court’s community service program, attend the Sheriff’s Office day reporting program and also complete 13 anger management classes.

That was before Landrieu himself took the stand and prompted Waldron to send him to jail for contempt.

Further details on what Landrieu said and did were not immediately available.

Wonder what he did.  I'm guessing he won't get his Cracker Jack prize badge back for a while. 

Has John Bel Edwards had an official campaign launch event yet?

This seems like an appropriate venue.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is now complete and slated to begin transporting oil between Texas and St. James Parish next week, the companies that own the controversial project have announced.

The 163-mile-long Louisiana section of the pipeline, which sparked years of protest and legal challenges from environmentalists and property rights advocates, links to a nearly 50-mile section in Texas that was completed in 2016.

The Governor and all of his friends in the oil industry could have a big ol' ribbon cutting.  They'd invite the Landrieus and probably some guys from Tiger Swan or maybe the Israeli security contractors he met with last year to help keep protesters at bay. It could be a real celebration of everything this administration has stood for so far. 

Virtual football

I know this is cathartic for a lot of people but I really don't think it is a great idea.  I mean I guess it's cool if you are into virtual reality or.. like "deep fakes"videos or conceptual art or any sort of media that gets us talking for hours about things that didn't happen in real life.

It's so "affordable" here, everyone is getting evicted

Jane Place has a report out this morning on evictions in New Orleans. Read through at your leisure but I'll just point out a few things real quick. This is a survey of court-ordered evictions.  They were only able to include here the cases Timothy David Ray recorded in-between writing out big checks to guys who moved boxes for him.  So much of what goes on in New Orleans happens on an informal basis so, doubtless, the count here is low.

Even so, the numbers are strikingly bad. The study finds our eviction rate to be twice the national average. Black renters are disproportionately affected. And the most evictions tend to happen in "affordable" neighborhoods.

Residents in these neighborhoods are experiencing the highest housing cost burdens despite the comparatively lower housing costs. Residents in these neighborhoods also face the highest barriers to accessing economic opportunities such as quality jobs, reliable public transportation, and suffer from a lack of amenities such as grocery stores

And, as the report notes at the top of its intro, rents in New Orleans have increased by almost 50 percent during the past two decades while incomes have stagnated and declined.

So what to do? Well, there are recommendations in the report too. We could debate the relative merits of each. But suffice to say the housing crisis requires a more comprehensive solution than simply adding "supply" to the market.

City of No we don't want to hear about it

It's not clear why the mayor ditched this effort to count the number homeless who die on the streets of New Orleans each year. Her spokespeople only say here that she "would certainly consider" something like it in the future.

City officials effectively killed the effort through what Miller describes as widespread indifference and a refusal to devote any resources to ensure every homeless death was counted.

So last year’s count stopped at 40. No one knows how many more people died. The final number could be 80. It could be 100. It might be more. It might be less.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who initially agreed to an interview to discuss the issue, instead issued a statement saying her administration is dedicated to “finding inclusive and responsible ways to address homelessness.”

The mayor “took an interest in the report put together in prior years,” Communications Director Beau Tidwell said in reference to Miller and Burchfield’s work. “As mayor, she would certainly consider instituting an official annual accounting of homeless deaths. Our health department will be evaluating best practices from other cities.”

The article makes an effort to show that other cities do work like this. It also suggests that Cantrell's commitment to it wavered after she moved from City Council to the mayor's office.  But neither she nor anyone interviewed here provides an explanation as to why.  There must be something we aren't hearing.

Learn to live sick

The Berkley Law Clinic is suing the EPA on behalf of environmental groups in Alaska and Louisiana over its failure to adequately restrict the use of Corexit to "disperse" oil spilled into the sea during the Valdez and Macondo disasters.

This article (and presumably the lawsuit) cites several "recent studies" indicating the harmful effects of these dispersants.

Recent studies have indicated dispersants caused lung irritation, rashes, nausea and other illness in humans, as well as a host of problems for fish, deep-sea coral and other marine life. Dispersants can kill or inhibit the growth of oil-eating microbes, weakening nature’s ability to cleanup spills. New research also indicates that dispersants can have the unintended effect of transforming oil into a toxic mist able to travel for miles and penetrate deep into human lungs.

Those of us old enough to remember the 2010 Macondo spill will remember also that this was all widely understood and observed at that time.  None of that stopped BP from insisting everything was perfectly safe, of course.  So it is no surprise they are continuing to do so now. There is a BP contractor quoted in that story who says, "many of Corexit’s ingredients are shared by common health beauty products." So, you know, nothing to worry about. It's like Botox for the ocean.

Of course that doesn't help the many workers and fishers on the Louisiana coast who have documented health problems from exposure to these chemicals over the past decade. 

Arnesen, whose family business fishes for Gulf shrimp, crab and reef fish, said she continues to suffer from respiratory problems and headaches eight years after exposure to dispersants. She was aboard a vessel sprayed with dispersant while in Barataria Bay, an area hard-hit by the spill.

“Dispersant is nasty stuff to deal with,” she said Monday. “You learn to live sick.”

I guess they must think that's a bad thing?

It took me a while to figure it out yesterday but the general consensus out there is that this NYT article was intended as a criticism of single-payer health care. It's confusing because, of course, we ought to guarantee health care to every person as a basic human right. Only a monster would think otherwise.  All they're really pointing out here is doing that will be hard for us because there is so much wealth tied up in.. not doing it.

But doing away with an entire industry would also be profoundly disruptive. The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues. Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.

Such a change would shake the entire health care system, which makes up a fifth of the United States economy, as hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and pharmaceutical companies would have to adapt to a new set of rules. Most Americans would have a new insurer — the federal government — and many would find the health insurance stocks in their retirement portfolios much less valuable.

And, okay, that's a fair point. Single-payer healthcare (currently branded as "Medicare For All") is a revolutionary project in scope.  It is a call to break up entrenched institutions controlling vast stores of wealth and power.   The CEO of United Healthcare makes 298 times as much per year as its median employee salary. That sounds like an industry in profound need of disruption. But NYT is saying that like it would be a bad thing. 


It's true that fulfilling this moral imperative to free people from the fear and debt machine that is private health insurance, not to mention save hundreds of thousands of lives in the process is going to be a heavy lift. It's such a heavy lift, in fact, that Hillary Clinton's admonition that it was "never ever" going to happen, as cynical and hopeless as it sounds, is still the most sober assessment.  That's no reason not to try, of course. It's just that doing the right thing in politics almost always means failure and Hillary has had a very long and successful career in politics.  

She's mostly out of the way for now but that doesn't mean there aren't other successful Democrats on hand to waver on Medicare for All and whittle away its purpose.  

House Democrats plan to unveil health-care legislation on March 26 aimed at lowering costs and protecting people with pre-existing conditions, according to an advisory from the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The bill, broadly timed to coincide with the 9th anniversary this weekend of Obamacare being signed into law, would “reverse the Trump administration’s health-care sabotage, and take new measures to lower health premiums and out-of-pocket costs for families,” according to the statement.

The measure is set to be proposed as more than 100 Democrats in the House back a “Medicare for All” bill introduced in February by Progressive Caucus co-chair Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state. The legislation, which right now has no chance of becoming law in a divided Congress, would create a universal, single-payer health program. Pelosi and a number of party moderates have resisted the idea.

Strictly speaking, this proposal to patch up some of the holes the Republicans have blown in Obamacare in recent years doesn't have to be at cross purposes with the larger project of passing single-payer. Not immediately, anyway.  Eventually the latter measure should render the former moot, though. So it's fair to assume that Democrats who are not among the 100 cosponsors of Jaypal's bill but do support more insurance-friendly bill's like what Pelosi is introducing tomorrow are making an explicit choice to support the industry over the needs of patients.

Cedric Richmond is the only Democratic member of the Louisiana congressional delegation. Which side is he on? 

Shadow government

Yeah but enough about FNBC for now.

This week, a City Council committee will review candidates for appointment to Sewerage and Water Board. There are 15 nominees to fill 7 open seats in accordance with reforms passed by the legislature last year. The new law is complicated. It requires at least one seat be filled by a civil engineer. Two board members have to be "consumer advocates" whatever that means.

Mainly, though, the ostensible purpose of the reform law was to make the board more politically accountable. It's not clear it actually accomplishes this.  It does assign a city councilmember one seat which is fine. It also sets up this review process for whatever that's worth. But the key to all of it is the selection of the nominees. And look who has control over that.

The selection committee comprises the leaders of New Orleans’ seven universities and colleges, or their designees, and representatives of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce and the Urban League of Greater New Orleans.

The mayor cannot reject the selection committee’s nominations, but the City Council can vote any of them down.

Nobody elects these people. It's all professional fundraisers and networkers among the business elites. They do not, in even the slightest way, represent the interests of the poor and working classes who comprise the great majority population of the city.  It's no surprise, then, that the names produced by this process are pulled from GNO Inc., The New Orleans Business Alliance, BGR, and others among the usual suspects in finance and real estate.

There's also the case of the civil engineer, supposedly a good-government effort at providing professional guidance. That doesn't appear to be his primary qualification, though, as McBride points out here.

Note that while Mr. Pilie appears to have been an engineer a while back (his professional engineering license is shown as being granted in 1978 but now expired on the LAPELS website), he is an active member of the Louisiana Bar (admitted 1982), practicing as the leader of a team of environmental lawyers at Adams and Reese, where he has been since 1984 and is currently a partner.

His webpage at Adams and Reese says he leads a team "in all of the firm's legal representation of a major oil producer." Based on filings online, that producer appears to be ExxonMobil, with Pilie representing them as far back as 1991 when it was just Mobil. His Adams and Reese bio also says he "coordinates a large oil company’s docket of litigation relating to naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM)." Based on publicly available court records, he has been defending ExxonMobil in class action cases by filed by workers who cleaned Exxon pipes for a contractor in Harvey, LA in the 1980's and got exposed to the radioactive materials in dust form.

So on Tuesday, city councilmembers will get to review these nominees.  But the table has already been set for them by people who are responsible only to money.

La banque c'est moi

BIG NEWS today in the BIG federal investigation that everyone has been watching with rapt anticipation.  There is a new indictment in the FNBC scandal.

First NBC Bank's former top lawyer was charged in federal court Friday with conspiracy to defraud the New Orleans bank, which failed two years ago in the biggest U.S. bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis.

Gregory St. Angelo served as First NBC's general counsel for a decade until 2016, and during that time, he took out loans totaling tens of millions of dollars from the bank, many of which went into default. He is accused of conspiring with two former top First NBC officials to defraud the bank: President and CEO Ashton Ryan, referred to in court documents as "Bank President A," and former Chief Credit Officer Bill Burnell, referred to in the documents as "Bank Officer B."

It says here that St. Angelo is and has been cooperating with prosecutors and is likely to plead and roll, probably on Ryan.  Seems like he's still keeping his spirits up, though. 

Ryan continues to maintain his innocence, according to his lawyer, Eddie Castaing.

“Anyone who committed fraud on the bank also committed fraud on Ashton Ryan and the board, and they should plead guilty," Castaing said Friday. "Ashton had nothing to do with it.”

Ashton Ryan IS the bank. Also he had nothing to do with any of the shady stuff the bank has been involved with. That's pretty good.

It's also a good sign. The further up this goes, the better it's going to be when someone like Ryan actually goes to court.  There are a lot more people and institutions that could get named in this thing.  One example, among many, is the soon-to-reopen African American Museum.

In 2012 the museum cut expenses by eliminating its executive director position. At the time, a board member said that NOAAM’s yearly income had fallen to $200,000, less than half the ideal $500,000 operating income. In March 2013 the museum announced it had closed to complete renovations and never reopened.

According to a report by WWL-TV, the museum’s troubles continued when Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield briefly became a board member. Mayfield had served as chairman of the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, and was accused of unlawfully steering nearly $1.4 million from that organization to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. He left the African American Museum board in 2016 after reportedly incurring a $1 million bank loan on behalf of the museum. The loan had been granted by First NBC bank, which dissolved in 2017.

According to WWL, a philanthropic group called Treme Guardian led by businessman John Cummings assumed the bank loan in the interest of the museum. In 2014, Cummings, an attorney, opened the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La., an institution designed to confront the history of slavery. But in 2018, Treme Guardian sued the NOAAM in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, alleging the museum had failed to make payments on the $1 million loan, continued to allow it historic properties to deteriorate and neglected to carry proper insurance.

There are more than just that, of course.  Hopefully this keeps going. 

Forty five percent of Treme is STRs

This is an infuriating report on STRs and the housing crisis for several reasons but, holy crap, just read the dang lede.

New Orleans’ Treme is regarded as the nation’s oldest African American neighborhood, but some of its residents, like Darryl Durham, now say that legacy is fading quickly.

In recent years, short-term rentals with companies such as Airbnb proliferated and now operate on about 45% of the Historic Faubourg Treme District’s parcels. Resulting rent rises and property taxes stemming from that have forced out many black families and residents, said Durham, a musician who has lived there since 2006.

I daresay prior to the David Simon plague, Treme wasn't much on the radar of the typical American authenticity tourism investor.  Maybe they would have discovered it anyway. We're coming up on Jazzfest season. No doubt the smart money visitors will be scoping out our neighborhoods for new opportunities.

The city is much more an open book than it ever was. But nobody knows how to read it anymore.   Transplants (even the good ones) tend to outnumber natives in a variety of spaces. For me, the most profound change in that regard over the past decade has been at work.  I still can't decide whether it's more frustrating when I have to explain the most basic information about the city's history/culture/politics to co-workers, customers, and especially bosses or when they confidently explain them to me incorrectly. The vernacular of life in New Orleans we once took for granted has either disappeared entirely or been converted into some over-curated caricature of itself.  For the profit of the very few, of course.

New Orleans is a tourism- and hospitality-centric economy, and Sharika’s story is similar to the stories you hear from hospitality workers in the city. Tourism generates approximately $7.5 billion a year in revenue for the city, yet the workers who make the system run aren’t seeing their fair share. Instead, they see inconsistent incomes and public transit routes, but consistently rising rents (often driven by the explosive growth of short-term rentals) and cost-of-living.

This past weekend we had a fun day. On a Sunday in March, here on the Central City/Garden District cusp, one can walk out the front door, turn left and walk to Super Sunday, turn right and walk to St. Patrick's Day, or set out some chairs on the sidewalk and wait for bits of both to come to you.

This year we did it all three ways.We walked down to Parasol's and sipped whiskey for a while. Then we walked back up  and followed Indians around for a while before planting ourselves on the porch.  The sad thing about days like that, though, is these little treks through the neighborhood make it obvious how many tourists "live" there.  They're easy to spot rolling their luggage in and out of a startling number of houses with tell-tale keypad locks like this one.



So the fun days at home are increasingly tinged with dread. As neighborhoods give themselves over further and further to tourism, what and who are neighborhood celebrations for? And will there be anyone left who actually lives here with a long enough memory or family history in these communities to even care or know the difference?

"You are hurting this recovery and you need to stop it"

First, a correction.  Yesterday when we linked to this Advocate story about the dubious claim that Sewerage and Water Board has  $134 million in uncollected bills sitting out there, we mistakenly believed that issue had been raised by S&WB itself.  It turns out the point actually came from Councilman Giarrusso's staff.  We'll get to why that matters in a minute.  But first, there is this other thing that happened.  In an amusing follow-up to yesterday's story, the Advocate has cleverly decided to publish the mayor's feedback. 

Remember, LaToya has been working behind the scenes with the governor and the city's legislative delegation to land a sensitive deal with the city's tourism magnates over tax revenues.  The mayor has, correctly, asserted the money in question could be better applied to shoring up city infrastructure than its current purpose which is, basically, making the tourism magnates richer.

Unfortunately,  the deal currently reported to be in the works only takes the slightest, insufficient step toward that goal while largely preserving the untenable status quo.  It's not a long term solution. But brokering it does present the mayor an opportunity to make a superficial claim on a political "win" which, of course, is all she really cares about.

So she called in to say some things.

Those fragile negotiations could be imperiled if state officials do not believe the S&WB is doing all that it can to properly manage its own finances. That concern was explicitly voiced by an angry Cantrell, who called The Advocate late Tuesday afternoon to complain that reporting on the figures “could kill the deal.” 

 “What do you want to do, screw the city?” Cantrell asked in a phone call hours after the newspaper posted an online story about the questions over unpaid bills. “Is that what you want?”

“Who’s doing the work trying to get the money we need? Me,” she said. “It’s for the city. And it’s just that serious. You can play games if you want, but this is not the one. It’s not it.”

Now it doesn't look like Cantrell threatened to "cold cock" anybody, but plenty people heard some distinct Nagin echoes nonetheless.

Others of us heard some Trump too. But, as we've pointed out previously, Trump and Nagin exist in very much the same genre.  Harboring no true ideology beyond self-aggrandizement, this particular type of pol is always willing to tolerate any injustice and appease any wealthy toad so long as it suits the ego. And, of course, there is the hallmark reflexive lashing out at any and all criticism.  All of which is very much on brand for LaToya as well so it's hardly surprising to see it here. But, as amusing (or disconcerting.. I often confuse the two) as the spectacle is, there are still some questions that haven't been answered.

First, the $134 million clearly is not real. We already know S&WB can't send anyone an accurate bill.  Why assume that they can compile an accurate record of outstanding accounts?  McBride says here that they can't.  (Update:  NOLAdotcom also reports on the" murkiness" of the numbers here) Anyway, given all of this, why would Cantrell not dispute these numbers in her call to the Advocate?

Cantrell did not dispute the numbers — in fact, she credited her administration with already being aware of them — but said reporting on the figures promoted a “false narrative” that the S&WB could do without money she says it needs for the city's very survival.

"Credited her administration with already being aware of.." the numbers but not questioning them?  If the bogus number tells a "false narrative," maybe someone should get on that.  Cantrell sounds like she would prefer to sweep it all under the rug until it's too late for anyone to ask.  It makes sense when you remember this was the mayor who made everyone on her transition team sign non-disclosure agreements. Paranoid behavior just breeds more suspicion, though.  Why not just conduct the public business in public?

Which brings us to the next question.  It's not even the Advocate's reporters who brought this up in the first place. It was Councilman Giarrusso. Give him credit, at least, for asking the question in a public forum.  But, as you can see here, if anyone is promoting the "narrative" Cantrell is concerned about, it is him. 

Under questioning by Giarrusso at a Public Works Committee hearing Tuesday morning, S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban said he could not dispute the figures. But Korban added that it would take months to figure out how much was actually owed by customers and how much was the result of billing problems or other errors.

It was unclear how much of that money would turn out to be entirely uncollectable for those and other reasons, he said.

“The numbers that we learned today of $134 million possibly being owed to Sewerage &Water Board are eye-popping,” Giarrusso said after the meeting. “We want them to have the money they need to operate. But they’ve got to collect the money that’s owed to them.”

Did LaToya call up Giarrusso to yell at him too?  Maybe she did. We kind of hope so, anyway, since he does need a talking to. Not so much about the billing stuff but about this. 

Giarrusso said Thursday that rather than shutting off water to those who owe money, the S&WB should consider using devices that would limit the amount of water that could go to a customer. That would limit the water they get to what is needed for essential needs — such as drinking and cooking — while not providing enough for bathing or more extravagant uses like watering lawns.

What is he trying to screw the city? 

Burn after reading

I would very much like to pitch this Clerk of Court story to the Coen Brothers. It's probably not violent enough (yet?) But the farce element is certainly there. 

Days after our first story aired, Flores wrote a letter to the court’s judicial administrator saying he was “contracted to do a job, but before the work could be completed the officeholders transitioned." He also stated he would send a reimbursement check for nearly $3,200.

Badon said last week a person showed up at the courthouse with a check for $3,000 and $1,767 in cash -- one dollar more than the check he was written for the estimates for the clerk’s office.

“For me -- that’s a red flag, because why isn’t it all in the form of a check?,” Badon said. “I don’t know why they did it. I don’t know who the person was that did it. I know it was a Caucasian female who came into office and dropped it off. But nobody knows who that individual is.”

Badon said the court is holding the money in a safe and won’t deposit it since the report is now in the hands of law enforcement.

 And then they drop off an envelope full of cash to Austin Badon, the script reads.  That's good stuff.

Prove it

Sewerage and Water Board now says they need to come by and pick up that money we owe them.  It's about $134 million.

The Sewerage & Water Board has failed to collect more than $134 million in charges racked up by customers over the last three years, money that amounts to almost half the operating budget of the financially ailing agency.

City Council members have questioned the amount owed to the utility for months, and at a public works committee on Tuesday S&WB officials detailed the scope of the problem. But they said more research is needed to determine how much of the money is due to unpaid bills rather than errors or other issues.

Jesus, if you don't know that the number is even real, why publicize it? Part of the context here concerns the mayor and various state legislators' pursuit of a grand bargain over ways to bolster S&WB funds with tourism revenues. Currently, that deal looks more like a capitulation on the mayor's part than anything else, as we wrote yesterday. 

So it's hard to know how to feel about the question of whether this business about uncollected bills puts all that in jeopardy.  On the one hand, we'd probably prefer to wait until SWB learns how to bill your its accurately and on time before we take this seriously.

OR maybe Jason Williams will just go ahead and believe whatever you tell him. 

Council members said those arguments would be undermined -- and support from state officials would be lost -- if it seemed the S&WB was letting collectible debts slip through the cracks.

“We’re talking about $140 million being on the table and we’re asking for people to come save us?” Councilman Jason Williams asked.

And maybe that's for the best if it blows up the bad deal for now.  It probably won't. In any case, if this touches off another round of water shut-off threats aimed at ratepayers, we should demand that S&WB prove it really is owed what it says it is before any action is taken.

Sure hope they know what they're doing

The 2019 Saints are going to a good deal more different from the 2018 Saints than the 2018 teams was different from 2017.  The loss of Mark Ingram is obviously the most visible change. That's been written about enough already, so I won't say much.  The way he ended up leaving for virtually the same figure the Saints replaced him for seems suspicious to a lot of people but I imagine it was more an accident than anything else.  There was a chain of events that week involving three of four different teams that played out like an especially stupid Three's Company episode. It's hard to know who or what to blame. Probably nobody.  Anyway, it's clear Ingram was a critical team leader over the past few seasons. And he had grown to be an absolute fan favorite. This is going to be a different team without him.

It's also going to be a different defense.  The Saints were near the top of the league in run defense last year. But with Sheldon Rankins's return uncertain, David Onyematta's suspension, and Alex Okafor's departure, there are major changes happening along the defensive line. More may be in the works.

Oh also Max Unger retired.

The point here isn't to just list the free agency comings and goings. There are plenty of those every year.  But this year it seems like the goings scoop out a bit more of the heart and soul of the team than usual.  It might be fine. But it's a risky thing to have happen when you're trying to make one last run before your quarterback retires.

Kicking you off the internet

Conservatives are doing the same thing to the internet that they've always done to media. They are looking for better ways to bully the companies that control it into protecting their fragile little feelings and supporting their otherwise unpopular agenda.  It would be a shame if we let them get away with that again. But we always do so why would this be any different.

The Grand Bargain

Krewe D'Etat float depicting Mayor Cantrell and NO and Company's Stephen Perry engaged in a tug-of-war over tax revenue


Here is a T-P story about the latest package of make-work projects the Convention Center has slated in order to continue justifying the existence of a slush fund it manages out of its share of hotel-motel tax revenues. They're getting a new roof, re-doing the bathrooms, putting in some new A/V equipment and a bunch of other stuff.  You've probably already seen the work underway on the redesign of Convention Center Boulevard. That's part of this too. As is, of course, the infamous Jaeger/Berger hotel project.

Part of that package includes $67 million to help spur construction of a new 1,200-room hotel, pegged for 47 acres at the convention center’s northern end across from Mardi Gras World. The hotel proposal has come under scrutiny from Cantrell and the watchdog nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research, which priced the incentives developers are seeking at nearly $330 in public costs including tax breaks and a free land lease. A consultant the convention center hired has said those incentives round out closer to $170 million.

We already know the hotel is a big political controversy.  But it's really just one scheme in a long running gambit by the Convention Center to keep its surplus cash rolling in by spreading it around among the city's political and business elite. The surplus derives from a strategic decision to refinance rather than retire bonds originally intended to fund the convention hall's abandoned Phase IV. The workaround allows the Convention Center to continue collecting the tax dedicated to servicing those bonds. The arrangement is legally ambiguous. In order to justify it at all, they have to spend the money on something, though.  And that's how we get these renovation projects/street reconstructions/hotel plans like the ones described in that T-P article.

It would be nice if we could say the hotel was the last straw. But it's likely all of this would have been allowed to go in perpetuity with important people passing free money back and forth among themselves as long as we could maintain the illusion that we were at least able to approximate the basic infrastructure of a typical US city might rely on in, say, the late 19th century.

But, as it happens.. 

More than half the water that leaves the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board’s treatment plants may be seeping through broken pipes and into the ground before it reaches customers — an amount of waste that is far out of line with other utilities, according to a new report from a consultant hired to study the problem.

All that wasted water — and the millions of gallons more that go to hydrants and other public uses that aren't billed — accounts for almost 20 percent of the cost of running the water system, according to the report, adding further strain to a utility that has faced financial instability for years.

So in order to deal with this, everyone is going to have to get by with a little bit less graft than they've gotten used to.  Or maybe not.

We read in the Advocate today that a working group of 22 public officials and tourism executives are hammering out a grand bargain that should preserve everyone's racket. All they have to do is agree on a buyout price.

A dozen people involved in the latest behind-the-scenes discussions say they think the two groups can deliver about $50 million of the $75 million in one-time money that Cantrell is seeking.

They would cobble it together from a variety of sources including federal money, a small portion of the $235 million in reserves held by the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, a tax on short-term rentals in New Orleans and altering the structure of taxes on hotel guests.

Any agreement would include an initial offer by tourism leaders that Cantrell rejected as inadequate by itself: reinstating a 0.55 percent sales tax on hotel rooms that just expired. That would provide $6.7 million a year to the city.

This would have to happen in several different pieces of legislation. But the overall picture amounts to something like a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes type deal cities often strike with developers.  It would exchange a lump sum payment from the Convention Center for future concessions back to the tourism cabal. Basically they're buying the mayor off.

The legislative details aren't available yet. But the general idea is the S&WB gets a one time emergency payment and the cabal gets everything it wants. Berger and Jaeger get their hotel. And the Convention Center gets to ret-con its Phase IV slush fund into legitimacy.

The hotel’s design and financing package have not been approved yet by the convention center’s governing board. Sawaya said it could come after the Louisiana Legislature meets this spring. That’s when legislation will likely be proposed to tweak language in current state law that restricts how the convention center can spend its hotel tax revenue, he said.

That legislation, Sawaya said, would scrap a provision that requires a chunk of tax revenues to fund an expansion project that the convention center decided to abandon after Hurricane Katrina. It’s been a focal point for critics of the convention center’s large reserve account who question why that account has been allowed to grow so large for a project that won’t ever be built.

“We have to unwind that,” Sawaya said, referring to state law on the expansion project-tied tax revenue.

Unwind and then rewind, he means. This doesn't say they have to give the money up; only that it won't be based on Phase IV anymore.  Again, we'll have to wait and see what the pieces look like but it figures to be mostly bad.  The fact that part of the deal is built on a "short term rental tax" is ominous. The mayor has been mostly quiet about STRs since taking office. This could signal her intent to favor their proliferation. 

Fundamentally, Mayor Cantrell is selling out the city's working classes while allowing the tourism criminals to maintain their wealth and privilege. The news media won't write it that way.  Likely they will praise her acceptance of the one time emergency payment as a big political victory. It's true the city and S&WB needed that money desperately. Maybe her bargaining position was never that strong.

It's just as true, though, that the oligarchs were never entitled to anything like what they're getting away with.  A true political victory here would break the power of concentrated wealth to withhold vital services from the public.  But, remember, LaToya always told us she was never interested in "taking from the rich and giving to the poor and all that kind of crap."

In one indication a deal is imminent, several of the key negotiators are participating in a public forum on tourism hosted by the Advocate on April 3.  We don't yet know what percentage of the $20 admission price will go to funding public infrastructure. But there's still time to hammer all that out.  In any case, the tone of the conversation should be nice and friendly. The panelists will probably spend most of the time congratulating each other. No one who might possibly object to the arrangement will be in the room.

.@theadvocateno is hosting a panel about the tourism industry but no musicians, service industry worker reps, or culture bearers have been invited. There is only one women panelist, and almost all of the rest are wealthy, white tourism industry executives. https://t.co/sle3u1r9fG

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) March 16, 2019

Print shop politics

Someday we're going to walk into Office Max and find Timothy David Ray there behind the counter. He seems to have a handle on the supplies and furnishings business.

Timothy David Ray lost his bid to serve as the permanent clerk of 1st City Court in November, but that didn’t stop him from cutting a number of suspicious checks from an obscure government bank account just before he left office, according to a recent audit.

Ray gave $4,766 to a Plaquemines Parish pastor for shelving that was never completed, $5,150 to an Apple store employee for questionable moving expenses, and $360 to a printing company for “business cards” that might have been unnecessary, forensic auditors said.

In total, the auditors said that Ray spent more than $10,000 in public funds on suspicious expenses during his last two weeks in office — findings that prompted New Orleans judges to refer him to the FBI and local law enforcement officials on Wednesday.

What a strange case.  Ray finished slightly out of the running in a city council primary a few years ago before landing the interim clerk gig.  Still, Ray seemed like an up and comer.  It seems like a waste to throw that away on something like this.  He couldn't get himself elected there outright because he ran up against Austin Badon's many years of experience having bought office supplies for the right people himself.

In other words, don't expect much improvement in efficiency or ethical operations at the Clerk's office just because Ray is on the way out.  Which was basically Dangerblond's point the other day when I brought this up on Twitter.  She also took exception to the Advocate's characterization of the office as "under the radar," which we have to agree is sort of condescending toward the readership.

I love how he calls it an “under the radar” clerk’s office. Why is it “under the radar?” YOU are the radar, dumbass. You could do a major story once a month if you aimed your radar at the courts and  clerks of court in Orleans. The place is run like a banana republic circa 1972.

— 〰🏚〰 (@dangerblond) March 15, 2019

Praline disconnection

This didn't last very long.

The Praline Connection was in business on Frenchmen Street for close to 30 years before changing hands and relocating to the French Quarter late last year. The move did not go well.

The Praline Connection closed before Mardi Gras and its location at 301 Decatur St. remains empty.  Aaron Motwani, the local restaurateur who bought Praline Connection from its founders last year, said today that the restaurant will return but could not yet say where or when.

“We’re definitely going to open up the Praline Connection again,” he said. “It’s an iconic brand and has a lot of value in it.”

LOL, yeah yeah "iconic brand."  Nothing is anything but a brand in NOLA Disney.  I wonder if we can buy the Gene's Po-Boy brand separately from the building it's about to vacate since we don't have the $5 million asking price handy.

Back in November when he bought Praline Connection and planned to move it to upper Decatur Street, Motwani said he thought that might get it closer to a "local" clientele. That never made any sense to us.  All the apartment buildings downtown are going timeshare these days. 

Besides the restaurant was far from the strangest deal the Motwanis had going on at the time.

Anyway, it's hardly surprising this wouldn't work out.  I don't think it was ever meant to.  If I'm reading this correctly, the Motwanis do own the building, though.  Wonder what the plan is for that now.  

If only 70s Bernie were running in 2020

Everything in here kicks an extraordinary amount of ass.

(CNN)Bernie Sanders advocated for the nationalization of most major industries, including energy companies, factories, and banks, when he was a leading member of a self-described "radical political party" in the 1970s, a CNN KFile review of his record reveals.

Sanders' past views shed light on a formative period of his political career that could become relevant as he advances in the 2020 Democratic primary.

 

Many of the positions he held at the time are more extreme compared to the more tempered democratic socialism the Vermont senator espouses today and could provide fodder for moderate Democrats and Republicans looking to cast the Democratic presidential candidate and his beliefs as a fringe form of socialism that would be harmful to the country.

If CNN wants to describe this as "fringe" they can do that, I guess. But it seems to us that with only 10 years or so left to do anything at all about climate change, the time to start taking these measures is... well, actually, the best time would have been forty years ago when Bernie was saying all this. But now would be good too.

Unfortunately we've only got moderate Bernie in 2020. CNN seems to think this 70s Bernie stuff is some sort of negative against his current campaign, though. Not sure where they're getting that from.

Beto!

Finally the guy who lost to Ted Cruz is running for President. No idea why that's good. The campaign that almost beat Cruz actually did some good in Texas dragging a lot of down ballot Democrats into judgeships and state house seats in the process.  It might have been a good idea for Beto to try and see if he could do the same thing again by almost beating John Cornyn. Instead he's doing this. People are excited for some reason.

It’s fairly easy to explain O’Rourke’s rise: he’s a handsome, tall white guy who liberals can project their longings onto, with little substance to get in the way. He’s been called the “white Obama,” which to liberals seems to mean a return to a time when they were on top, when they felt secure that the seething masses of MAGA chuds who now control the country were safely tucked away in their suburbs.

“He has an aura,” Vanity Fair writes.

Cool, but also, who cares?

O’Rourke, Vanity Fair reports, has been drinking the Kool Aid about himself.

“I got in there, and I don’t know if it’s a speech or not, but it felt amazing,” he tells Vanity Fair of a speech he gave during his failed Senate campaign. “Because every word was pulled out of me. Like, by some greater force, which was just the people there. Everything that I said, I was, like, watching myself, being like, How am I saying this stuff? Where is this coming from?”

Oh dear.

In addition to being full of himself, Beto is also just flat out bad. He's been more explicit than most of the Dem field in distancing himself from the left. He opposes Medicare for All, even in name. Defend that as "electable-in-Texas" if you must, but Beto isn't running in a Texas election. He's running in the Democratic Presidential primary field where we have big picture debates about the direction and values of the party. But Beto doesn't believe in very much outside of having an aura or whatever. 

He does distinguish himself as probably the most right leaning candidate to announce so far.  (Biden still isn't in quite yet.) Apart from the conservative positions we've already mentioned, O'Rourke is also married to the heir to a billion dollar real estate fortune which voters in rapidly gentrifying cities with exploding housing crises like, say, New Orleans, can appreciate.  He's also a big charter school guy.  That's sure to do well for him too in places like, say, New Orleans.

Anyway, Beto! He's here! He'll probably be here for a while. Enjoy that.

The Sonder exception is still in the rules

The City Planning Commission is going to meet at 1:30 on Tuesday to work on Short Term Rentals again. They'll be working with a set of recommendations dutifully put forward by their poor pitiable staff who have been asked to do this several times now.   Well, here they go again. 

The rules proposed by the staff of the City Planning Commission would keep the heart of the City Council’s plan: a requirement that short-term rentals be allowed in residential areas only if the owner lives on the site. But the planners recommend allowing only one entire unit per property to be rented out at residentially zoned properties, while council members had envisioned allowing up to three.

Yeah well that is good and all but when this gets kicked up to Council, they're likely to shift it back.  Still it's encouraging to find that somebody still thinks 1 STR per homestead exemption is good policy. Pity they only think that's good enough for strictly residential zones, though.  The rules get slightly looser for mixed use and entirely too loose in commercial zones. We've talked as nauseum about the problems with this so we won't get too boring about it now.

I did want to point out that Jason Williams's gift to Sonder and Motwani is still very much intact, though.

Larger-scale operations would be allowed in commercial areas. A homestead exemption would not be required on those properties, but the staff's recommendations would prohibit most properties from using more than a quarter of their units as short-term rentals, with some exceptions such as for portions of Canal Street and Bourbon Street.

Anyway, this is far from the last stop for this business.  If you've got comments about tomorrow's CPC meeting, you might as well copy your councilmember on that too. 

Billy and the redeemers

Nungesser told a bunch of  "tourism and cultural preservation officials" yesterday that he's going to put all the Jim Crow monuments back on public display soon.  That should go over really well.

I notice here, also, that Billy implies Mayor Cantrell is cooperating with him in this task.   That also should go over really well.  Even so he can't help but show a little ass toward her city even as the negotiations are ongoing.

“I’ve met with her several times. I really believe in my heart she wants it resolved in a way that satisfies -- as much as we can – everyone," he said. The event was hosted by the Robert E. Lee Monumental Association.

Attendees cheered Nungesser’s promise that public input will be taken on all proposals. He said he personally favors building a replica of Lee Circle in Mandeville’s Fontainebleau State Park, which his office oversees.

He says the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee would be back on top of his pedestal, with his back side facing New Orleans.

So... yeah... that ought to go over super well too.

Maybe somebody can follow up with the mayor on this.  When they do, I hope they would also ask her about the folks in Nungesser's cheering audience.  WWNO doesn't name any of them but describes them as "tourism and preservation officials" so you have to figure there are some prominent individuals among them.  The hosting "R.E. Lee Monumental Association" is listed on the Sec of State's website. Its president is William Mason.  His name does not appear on the organization's website. Nor does anyone else's.  It says here on the membership page that donations and members will remain anonymous.  I don't think Billy's audience was masked, though.  Mardi Gras is over and most of them have put their hoods away..... we think, anyway.

Of course the anonymous donations to the white supremacist organization are tax deductible.  That's in keeping with the standard practice for culture and tourism oriented non-profits in New Orleans.  Take plantation owner, Joe Jaeger's proposed hotel for example.  It says here, Jaeger and his partners want to configure their development as a non-profit also in order to aquire a property tax exemption.  Assessor Erroll Williams is not so keen on that at the moment.

The tourism cabal is also seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in additional rebates and subsidies beyond just the propety tax exemption.

The proposed deal calls for $41 million in upfront cash from the Convention Center, a free 50-year land lease with four optional 10-year extensions, and a 40-year break on property taxes. It also would include complete rebates of a 10 percent hotel-occupancy tax and a 4 percent sales tax on all hotel revenue from sources other than room rentals.

Besides the $330 million value identified by BGR, the proposed plan also calls for other subsidies from the Convention Center: $26 million to perform “site prep” to remediate any hazardous soil and to install utilities on the site, and $20 million to connect the hotel to the Convention Center at Henderson Street

All of this, the wealthiest developers in town insist, is absolutely necessary for them to finance their surefire money making project on some of the most desirable real estate in the city.   If they need that much help, the tourism economy in New Orleans must be in a lot worse shape than they say it is. Either that or they're just not very good businessmen.

Another possibility is that's just how business is done around here. The Advocate points out that the World War II Museum, another of our celebrated tourism and cultural non-profits, is looking to build its own tax-exempt hotel.

Williams said he also isn’t inclined to grant a property tax exemption sought by officials at the National World War II Museum for the hotel they are building across Magazine Street from the museum. The officials say the hotel would be an “educational” facility, according to Williams. No one from the museum was available for comment.

Maybe if they hadn't spent their endowment on the Bollinger Canopy Of Peace they wouldn't have to ask for stuff like this, I dunno.  Anyway, they need more public money now.  And even though Williams is leaning away from giving them more, it isn't clear he's made a final decision yet.

Which is why, as this process goes on, he, and the mayor, may wish to consider the very likely overlapping rosters of individuals involved in the Convention Center project, the World War II Museum, AND the members of Nungesser's audience who cheered when he suggested we could all kiss General Lee's ass for him yesterday.  Can't imagine that's going to win them much favor.  But one never knows. 

Leon's "silent majority"

The hard right position Cannizzaro has staked out ahead of next year's DA election might be surprising given the context. The conversation on criminal justice policy has shifted in recent years enough to allow for the success of a few mild sentencing reforms, an end to the state's non-unanimous jury law, and popular sympathy for the ongoing legal effort to end so-called "debtor's prisons." 

But Leon insists that a "silent majority" of New Orleanians are laying in wait to push back against this, again, rather weak tide of cautious reform. When we noticed this ramping up last month it laid to rest our doubts that Cannizzaro would even seek reelection.  He's already in campaign mode.

Actually he's already in the second phase of  campaign mode. When the Lens caught up with him his spokesperson this week, they already found him playing to both sides a little bit.

In a statement, Cannizzaro’s spokesman Ken Daley said it would be “premature” to comment on an election that is nearly two years away. But he defended Cannizzaro’s record, saying the DA supported criminal justice reform programs when he believed they would work.

“The DA makes no apologies for aggressively prosecuting violent criminals,” Daley said. “That does not mean he opposes reform efforts, if they are rooted in common sense and not simply a grab for grant dollars.”

That's pretty clever.  New Orleanians are so gaslighted by a cycle of violent crime met with decades of "lock em up" rhetoric that they have readily embraced mass surveillance as well as gentrifying efforts such as crackdowns on bars and corner stores and music venues. So it's reasonable to assume a wariness of criminal justice reform from a significant slice of the electorate. Maybe this doesn't constitute a "silent majority" but it probably does mean Cannizzaro has a solid base from which to reach out.  Any opposition campaign will have a lot more work to do than he has.

Where's the rest of the Mardi Gras Guide?

Don't worry, it's all about to get dumped out in the coming purge. I kinda got swept up in a bunch of nonsense this weekend for some reason.....

Anyway I know where there are some ashes today

Mardi Gras Guide Part 1: Whose Streets? Everybody's Streets

Sirens, gunfire, a panicked crowd reaction, public safety personnel running this way and that.  No we're not talking about the CBD on a Friday night.  No, we're not talking about the scene when Parks and Parkways comes out to clear squatters and ladders off of the neutral ground. We're also not trying to describe the scene of some horrific, but also extremely unlikely, terror attack on a parade route.

Instead we are describing the scene in Armstrong Park last week when a bunch of cops had nothing better to do with their DHS money than go out and LARP their wildest fantasy of such an attack.

The New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness will conduct a "full-scale exercise" simulating an attack on a parade. This important drill will help New Orleans public safety agencies test emergency response plans in the event of a real attack. For example, the simulation will test a hospital surge plan to triage and handle a mass casualty incident. The City's family reunification plan to track and communicate with family members the status and location of people affected by an attack will also be tested through this drill. Role-playing with real people and real equipment allows emergency personnel to fully test plans, policies, and response.

Sounds fun! Was it fun? Looks that way. They had actors and props and floats and all kind of neat stuff. Here's the video.  It's always reassuring to see the SWAT crew show up in tanks.  Really puts you in the Carnival spirit.

The good news is everybody was pleased with the way it went. Emergency responders say they know who to call first and how to get where they need to go in case a drunk driver loses control near a crowd or in case somebody besides a cop fires a gun out there. Both of those things have happened before, of course. Still, it sounds like a lot of these procedures could have been covered in a series of memos and meetings but what would be the fun of that?  As for "terrorism," that's not likely to be as much of a concern.  That is,  unless when police and prosecutors don't want to share exculpatory evidence with defendants. Then there's a terrorist hiding behind every tree. Which is why the trees all have cameras now, probably. Even the floats have eyes.



Anyway, the point of all this is, Happy Mardi Gras!  We're already deep into the season and I've already got one sunburn and two moderate hangovers to show for it.  But, well, I've gone to all these parades and taken all these pictures so doggone it I'm gonna have to write about it a little bit.  In multiple parts, actually.  There's always a lot going on during Carnival season and it's already Friday. Let's see how far we can catch up before I have to go out and drink in the street some more.


The New Mardi Gras is over... or is really the Old Mardi Gras.. or..


Krewe of 'tit Chewbacchus rolling on through


Thanks, in part, to the late Carnival season... and probably to police paranoia as well... the parade schedule got shuffled around a bit this year.  The most significant change saw Chewbacchus moved from the first big Saturday night, all the way up to a week ahead of Krewe Du Vieux.  On the one hand this is probably bad in that it's yet another concession to the city's stupid insistence on supporting only one parade route at a time. On the other hand, maybe Chewbacchus really does belong in the pre-season.

After all, Chewbacchus does have a lot in common with the other small scale parades and street happenings that go on in the weeks before the major parades roll.  NOLADotCom art critic Doug MacCash erroneously lumped them together with a few other recently formed parades and marching clubs into something he calls "New Mardi Gras." But there are all sorts of problems with this appellation chief among them being the fact that there's nothing particularly new about the format any of these groups present. Small, independent, maskers and marching clubs have always been a part of Carnival. In fact, the tradition is older than the larger parade style introduced to New Orleans by Comus in the 19th Century.   We have other nits to pick with MacCash on this point but a lot of this ground was covered on the last Hunkerdowncast which you can listen to here if you really want to get into it. Probably the most thoughtful discussion of Chewbacchus and its place in the Carnival continuity came from this Jules Bentley article in 2015.

I'm still not clear on MacCash's motivation, though. A lot of the time it seems like he's deliberately trolling trolling on behalf of the treps and transplants who do, in fact, comprise much of the Chewbacchus membership. Maybe he's sympathetic to the club's libertarian ethic. Or maybe he just knows this is thing that will get a rise out of people. Just ahead of Chewbacchus, Doug ran with speculation sourced  to one of the Krewe's "Overlords" about the possibility of carrying ads in the parade. 

This year, for the first time, the Chewbacchus parade may include banners or other advertisements for local breweries and distilleries that are sponsors of the krewe. A city ordinance prohibits advertisements of any kind during the officially designated Carnival Parade Season (from the second Friday before Mardi Gras, through Mardi Gras day). But Overlord Ethridge points out that since the Chewbacchus parade falls outside of those dates, it’s legal to display ads.

Anyway, she said, Chewbacchus is actually a church that venerates the “Sacred Drunken Wookiee.” So alcohol is a sort of sacred sacrament and therefore alcohol ads are simpatico.

That touched off the predictable half day or so of yelling on Twitter until someone could follow up with the krewe to discover that, no, they weren't really serious. Was that what MacCash intended? or was it just a stupid accident?  Maybe we'll never know. Sound off in the comments.

Rex dumped Kern


Fancy shop sells fancy things to fancy people


This is going to be the last year of the longstanding relationship between the King Of Carnival and his float builder.  They will celebrate the occasion by staring into the sun together.

After this Mardi Gras, a different float-building company will take on the Rex parade floats after the Rex Organization and Kern Studios decided to end their partnership, according to a WWL-TV report.

Kern Studios has constructed the King of Carnival's floats for more than 65 years. After this year's Rex parade rolls with the theme "Visions of the Sun," another company will take on the task for at least the next five years, WWL-TV reported.

The WWL story doesn't pin down a reason for the split. We do know the Kern family isn't quite as stable as it once was but to say anything on top of that would be speculating. Also I couldn't help notice we got some comments from "Rex Organization official James Reiss."

"We're extremely proud to for 68 years to have had the backing of Kern artists in creating what we think is one of the premier parades during N.O. carnival," said Rex Organization official James Reiss. "As all business relationships do, they mature. We're extremely proud that Kern has now taken New Orleans Carnival not just to other krewes but internationally to places like China,  to Universal Studios. As they have grown, we think that we've been a big part of that growth. We're happy to see what they've done. It's just time for the two organizations to move on. It's really just an internal business decision. We're both very good friends and will remain so."

Yeah, well, good for them.  The thing is, we can't let Reiss's name pop up without mentioning again his role, and that of his peers, in realizing the vision of a new New Orleans, Reiss so helpfully laid out for us in the days after Katrina.

More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002.

A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Yeah, well, good for them, too. They got everything they wanted. The schools are all charters, the "demographics" have shifted, the city is smaller, whiter, and fewer poor people can afford to live here.  And, from the looks of things, our political leadership is fairly satisfied with that. This week, the City Planning Commission considered the results of a study on affordable housing set asides that appears to recommend taking little or no action.

Forcing developers to add lower-cost apartments to their residential projects would be difficult to implement outside of New Orleans' most sought-after neighborhoods, and it likely would create only a few dozen lower-priced units per year, according to a study commissioned by the City Council.

The local housing market is strong enough to support an affordable-housing mandate, known as "inclusionary zoning," only in areas such as the Central Business District and the French Quarter, said the study, a summary of which was released Tuesday.

As we've pointed out numerous times here, inclusionary zoning and developer incentives aren't going to protect our neighborhoods from displacement and gentrification anyway. To do that we need to build actual public housing and, very likely, to implement some sort of rent control policy. By admitting that "the market" isn't going to solve the problem for us, this study actually confirms this. That isn't what the CPC wants to hear, of course. And it's certainly not what they'll hear from any of the Rex Organization men. Maybe if something happened to displace them from their homes they might finally be able to empathize just a little bit.  But probably not.


A black wreath lain on the fencepost at the now ruined Downman Mansion. Rex is still going to stop here on Fat Tuesday.

There's all kinds of king cakes now


Also available in vodka form

King cakes used to be such a prime topic for hot takes.  Do you eat them out of season?  Do you like them filled or plain? Should the baby come in the cake or separately in the box?  Is your neighborhood bakery doing it wrong?

Most recently, I think, the thing that got everyone excited was the Dong Phuong fad and associated manufactured scarcity.  But I think it's time to declare that over now.  There also was a time when everyone enjoyed freaking out over the newest weird flavor with like... tomato sauce and pretzels on it or whatever.  But the process of one-upsmanship has become so baroque now that there are a million varieties and none of them can stand out anymore.  Do whatever you want with your king cake. Nobody is shocked. Nothing matters. 

The only sane move is to stick to basics.  So in light of that, here is a perfectly cromulent king cake guide from NOLA.com.  These are all good recommendations. I am still partial to Antoine's, though.

City government is saving Mardi Gras but also it is ruining Mardi Gras


A civilization rises on Napoleon Avenue


God bless Mayor Cantrell.  She has picked up and expanded on the previous administration's recent emphasis on reminding parade goers to share the public space and not obstruct it with too many ladders and tents and chairs and such. We here at the Yellow Blog have observed this problem closely for many years. We've even appeared in the local media from time to time advocating for change. It's gratifying to see the city take it seriously.

They've made it a major point in the annual get-ready-for-Carnvial press conference. 

The city will also be taking a hard line against those who leave items on the parade routes to try to reserve preferred spots.

Workers will clear away items such as tarps and ladders left along the routes, Parks and Parkways Director Ann McDonald said.

"We will not store items," she said. "We will not tag items. Any items that we remove will be destroyed.”

The "will be destroyed" comment got a lot of attention this week because LaToya repeated it as city workers charged down the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground making good on the threat. But it's worth noting this was the policy from the outset.  Anyway the beatings will have to continue until morale improves because people really do need to be forcefully reminded about these issues every year.  My personal observation has been that, while the enforcement effort has done some good, it hasn't obviated the problem entirely.  This week, the parade route is still tightly walled with tents, ladders, and those dang festival chairs that seem to get worse every year. If people would just put them in the back where they belong everyone would be able to move around and..... well, you've heard all this from me before.

A few weeks ago, this story got passed around about a guy offering to camp out and "save a spot" for on the neutral ground. 10 ft. by 10ft. for $2,000! This is supposed to be a free and open public celebration.  We can't allow the very public spaces dedicated to that purpose become walled off and monetized.

There is something else the city could do to decrease the high demand for real estate.  The city could allow the party to spread back out into the neighborhoods it once belonged in rather than bottle it all up along one corridor like the over-leveed Mississippi River.  One reason the St. Charles route is crowded beyond capacity with campers and ladders is it's more or less the only place anyone can go to catch a parade anymore.  It wasn't always like this as a recent Gambit commentary noted.

Older New Orleanians remember seeing the krewes of Endymion and Pontchartrain rolling through Gentilly and New Orleans East, respectively. The Krewe of Mid-City's unique, foil-wrapped floats once used to delight people in … Mid-City. And the Krewes of Freret and Carrollton used to roll down (you guessed it) Freret Street and Carrollton Avenue, respectively.

The concentration of parades on St. Charles Avenue makes things easier for the city, especially for our manpower-challenged police department, but it has taken something away from New Orleans' neighborhoods. Carnival season is a party we put on for ourselves, and it's time to ask: Can we move a few parades back to their neighborhoods?

We could move a few parades back to their neighborhoods. But the city doesn't want that. The police don't want it.  But the police and Homeland Security don't think we should be doing any of this in the first place and only tolerate it insofar as it benefits the tourism industry.  But our holidays are about more than the most crass and efficient means of turning a profit.  We're never going to put things right if all we do is listen to the police and wealthy few they serve and protect. And we're never going to solve the route overcrowding problem until we see that.

More Mardi Gras Guide to come:

Part 2: Racism, politics, and Carnival con artists

Part 3: The parade ratings matrix