Consultantocracy

When it comes to disentangling this knot, who even knows where to begin?

The New Orleans City Council has relied almost exclusively on outside consultants to regulate Entergy New Orleans for over 30 years. And it is those consultants that have largely decided what direction the city takes on a wide number of energy-related issues: How much can Entergy charge customers? How should the city generate or source electricity? How should the city prepare for hurricanes and deal with Entergy’s frequent outages?

But Councilwoman Helena Moreno — who chairs the council’s utility committee, which regulates Entergy — told The Lens she wants to break that structure. Specifically, she wants to expand the council’s in-house staff and expertise in order to become less reliant on contractors

That's going to be much more easily said than done. And, frankly, it's not even that easy to say.  Moreno isn't even entirely sure what she is asking for.

It remains unclear what the document will recommend, how fast Moreno will be able to move, or whether she will remain at the helm of the utility committee long enough to see the changes through.

“No one’s ever done this,” said Moreno’s Chief of Staff Andrew Tuozzolo. “New Orleans has never had this, really.”

We want to have some confidence that City Council can regulate Entergy competently and independently.  For decades they've mostly outsourced this function to consulting law firms.  During this time, the consultants have had longstanding relationships with prominent political organizations frequently cycling employees in and out of political office and/or in and out of employment by the utility itself.  So the public might be forgiven for wondering which side of the three way revolving door Jay Banks or Karen Carter Peterson is on at any given moment.  They promise they know how to keep it all straight but it can be difficult to parse as KCP demonstrates here.

Clint Vince’s law firm, Dentons, also gave $25,000 to the Louisiana Democratic Party’s political action committee between 2013 and 2018, according to state campaign finance records. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, the chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party since 2012, was hired by Dentons in 2014.

“Dentons does not have a relationship with the Louisiana Democratic Party,” Peterson said in an email to The Lens. “Separate and apart from my role with Dentons, I serve as chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party.”

It's kind of like trying to pull apart a dozen mardi gras beads that have gotten twisted together. They're all really just the same strings of the same lawyers, lobbyists, and political hangers on. Who knows where one begins and the other one ends?

Moreover, how do we even know who to trust with the task of sorting it all out? My favorite bit from the Lens feature article explaining this stuff comes where we learn about a critical Inspector General's report put together by.... yet another opportunistic third party consultant soliciting a job.

Vince questioned the conclusions in the Inspector General report.

He noted that the report was funded through a third-party grant. And its author — an outside consultant hired by the Office of Inspector General — later used his own findings to try and solicit a city job. According to a 2015 story by Fox 8 News, shortly after the report was released, the consultant wrote a letter to the city that said, in part, “I suggest you retain me immediately to address those issues.”

So, yeah, good luck figuring this out.  Moreno wants council staff to outline a plan by June. In order to put that together, I guess they're going to need to hire some consultants. Probably there will be lot of expertise at Dentons and Legend they could put to use... for a fee, of course.