Crown jewels

City Council is adding staff to its in-house utilities regulatory office (CUNO). The idea is to give the council more directly accountable agency in its oversight of Entergy instead of outsourcing that function entirely to consulting firms. The consultants aren't being replaced. This is more about CUNO having more of a policy voice. Currently it has practically none.

“What’s unprecedented about New Orleans … is that they outsource everything,” utility industry attorney Scott Hempling told The Lens in March. “I’m not aware of any place that has any resemblance to that paucity of internal expertise and the near total dependence on outside expertise. No place.”

Instead of having zero input, the council is now aiming to have some. 


But, while more direct regulatory engagement from the democratically accountable council is a welcome shift in the right direction, that's not all that's going on here. The consulting contracts, at a combined $7 million, are some of the biggest that city councilmembers can award to anybody. And this article suggests that these moves now could mean the next time the contracts come up for bid they won't automatically default to the same two firms who have held them contracts for almost 40 years. The contracts are up for bid in 2021. As it happens, that is also when the councilmembers are up for reelection.

Sooo, well you can see where this is going.

Moreno is not the first council member to push for change. Notable predecessors include Shelley Midura, Stacy Head and Susan Guidry. Those former council members told The Lens earlier this year that the consultants were able to keep their positions in part due to political connections and contributions.

“Certainly, politics come into play,” Head said. “And these advisers have been skilled at making sure they have alliances that will benefit them in keeping relationships with council members and getting their contracts renewed.”

Another former council member, Oliver Thomas, told The Lens that because the utility committee was responsible for assigning the bulk of the council contracts’ value, it was traditionally seen as politically powerful.

“When you talk about a crown jewel committee, that’s probably the most influential council committee,” said Thomas, who was chair of the utility committee from 2006 to 2007. “That’s where you can raise money. And more importantly than being able to raise money, that’s where you place your relationships and where you can help people who are trying to get involved in that particular industry. So that’s a plum jewel.”

Anyway if you're interested in following the next citywide election cycle, you'll want to pay attention to Dentons' and Legend's campaign contributions as well as those of their potential competitors.

Every emergency is an opportunity

No, we're not talking about Sewerage and Water Board just yet. But we'll get to it. There's a lot of emergencies to keep track of. Meanwhile, back at the Hard Rock site, the developers charged with demolishing the mess they've made there want to also knock down three more buildings in the process. Is it absolutely necessary for them to do this?  They haven't explained that yet. But it does look like it would be beneficial to them either way.

There’s also a worry that the developers might benefit from knocking down the buildings, since it would leave a large vacant parcel that could be sold or redeveloped to recoup the mounting costs of the collapse.

“All of that is a matter of speculation, but it certainly would result in a larger parcel for redevelopment and no assurance on what would be put back there,” Lott said.

There is a review process that goes through HDLC and then through other bodies including the City Council with probable input from the mayor.  But often these sorts of things get expedited during an "emergency." 

Actually it adds zing to the barbecue sauce

They say he had no use for it but I don't think they know.

Horn, a Saints standout and fan favorite who retired from the NFL after the 2007 season, admitting paying off co-defendants Vanover and Caldwell and others who helped him submit the false claims, according to court records.

Among those claims was reimbursement for a $52,000 cryosauna, a machine that uses nitrogen vapor to create freezing temperatures for body therapies. But Horn didn’t need the machine and never received it, prosecutors said.

It's the quick-freeze that really locks the flavor in.



Joe Horn Barbecue Sauce. Try some on your Beefy Mac 

If you live long enough, all of your heroes become Uncle Rico, I guess.

Anyway it's a shame this happened.  NFL retirees have had to fight pretty hard to get the league to do anything at all to help with the health care costs incurred after a career in pro football destroys their bodies. Ripping that fund off, in particular, is, as they say, not a very good look.

Of course, under a nationalized single payer health care system, none of this would even matter. But that's another conversation. 

There's always more to the story

Headline says, "OMG the driver was denied a permit!"  And, admittedly, that is a problem. But it's a very large and convoluted citywide problem involving the charter school system, the legal environment under which bus companies operate in Louisiana, and several other things. The top of this Lens article covers some of it if you are looking for a quick mode of entry.

Anyway back to this un-permitted driver today.  Why was he denied a permit?

City spokesman Beau Tidwell confirmed the Hammond’s Transportation bus was driven by Chad Rodney, who had applied for a city school bus permit on Sept. 24 and was denied because he had a 2016 conviction for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. By state law, school bus drivers can’t operate within five years of such a conviction, Tidwell said.

Is that a valid reason, though? Weren't we trying to end this kind of employment discrimination against ex-offenders? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess the bus didn't crash because the driver was busy selling coke at that particular moment today. 

What do we want for our city during the brief time it has left?

Gambit asks various political players and advocacy groups what they would like to see from the Governor during the next legislative term. There are some good answers as wells as some bad ones. LaToya says some good words about some interesting topics like the LaSalle Street controversy, the public defender's office, and "rail connectivity." We should wait to hear what she has in mind for those items, though, since she also takes a minute here to thank the Governor for his help with the Fair Sham. If her solutions to the new priorities are involve more giveaways to oligarchs the way that plan did, then that's going to be a problem.

Ethan Ellestad wants the Governor to appoint better people to the Convention Center board and Superdome Commission. But he's not likely to do anything different with those patronage opportunities than in his first term.  If anything, the fact that he doesn't have a reelection campaign to worry about now could make this even worse. Appointments are more likely to reward past donors now than they are to encourage community or labor support in the future.

Ethan also talks about housing but he frames that in stark capitalist terms as an "investment."

“For the culture,” Ellestad says, “it is investing in making sure people can stay in the communities where they’re from, because they are not just the creators of the culture, which comes from working class black communities, but also they are part of the service industry, which is the backbone of the tourism industry.”

Of course we need to make sure poor and working class people are not displaced from their neighborhoods.  But to turn that question of basic human dignity into a matter of "tourism industry" benefit is demeaning.  Your right to your city isn't based on your potential commoditization as a "culture bearer." You deserve more respect than that. I've written about this before. Unfortunately Ethan Ellestad's organization has embraced this dehumanizing and exploitative rhetoric wholeheartedly. It's going to continue to be an impediment to true housing justice.

Gambit also asks for comments from GNO Inc. for some reason.  Nobody should care what they think.

If I had to pick the best comment out of all of these it would probably be this from Anne Rofles.

“New Orleans’ risk of sinking into the Gulf of Mexico is already pretty high, but it is assured if Gov. Edwards continues to allow every chemical plant, oil refinery, pipeline and gas terminal that wants to come here to come here,” says Anne Rolfes, founding director of the environmental advocacy group Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “Right now he is rolling out the red carpet for them, and New Orleans will simply not exist if he does that.”

Last week we learned that, over the past decade, the state of Louisiana, one of the most environmentally threatened places in the nation, has slashed funding for its Department of Environmental Quality more than almost any other state.

In a 10-year period marked by a dramatic increase in newly built and planned petrochemical plants in the state, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has seen its budget slashed by nearly 35 percent and its staff cut by almost 30 percent.

So says a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that terms itself an environmental enforcement watchdog.

Louisiana’s funding cut percentage ranked second among the states, tied with Texas. The state ranked fourth in the percentage of staffing cuts, with Illinois, North Carolina and Arizona seeing larger cuts of 38% to 32%, according to the report.

Meanwhile the state continues to pour millions of dollars into state subsidies for the very industries most in need of monitoring. During this year's election campaign, John Bel told us as plainly as he could that that isn't likely to change in his second term.

Edwards has suggested Louisiana can continue to embrace natural gas for “20, 30, 40 years,” as the U.S. transitions to renewable energy. “There’s going to continue to be a demand for hydrocarbons for a long time to come,” he said, adding, "We are a natural gas state." 

John Bel was just narrowly reelected specifically because New Orleans turned out to vote in record numbers.  And yet he'd prefer to go on subsidizing oil and gas production for "20, 30, 40 years" even if it means New Orleans no longer exists. Enjoy those years while you have them, I guess.

There's a car on fire*

In our excitement to identify and catalog this weekend's various unrelated disasters, we missed the flaming bus that rolled in the Jingle On The Boulevard parade.  We gather this was an unplanned bus fire despite the fact that it was there specifically to carry the "Royal Heat" dance team.  We regret having overlooked the bus fire but are happy to report it is only the second school bus immolated in New Orleans East this year that we are aware of.

Similarly this morning's flaming vehicles that caused a French Quarter block to be evacuated are not the first cars on fire to appear in 2019. Today's event is unlike the one over the summer, though, in that because it is not suspiciously coincident to any ongoing political campaigns, there is a much better chance we will actually be told how and why it happened.

Actually, we are being told that this afternoon as I am typing this.  According to WWL:

What caused a loud boom and flames to erupt from the street in the French Quarter around 5:00am?

"This morning we had a challenge in the French Quarter with the explosion and the fire," said Col. Terry Ebbert, New Orleans Director of Public Safety and Security.

He explained that officials are blaming human waste.

"It appears that we had... methane gas underground."

Where did it come from?

"That is probably is due to (the) sewage system."

One thing we have learned this year is that, whether they blast it with flames from below, disable it in a flash flood, or just suck it straight on down into the culvert, Sewerage and Water Board is coming after your vehicle one way or another.

Anyway, another day, another (literal) shitstorm.  I wonder what will explode tomorrow.

*

Day in the life

Oh boy

The Sewerage & Water Board said that an explosion occurred in one of its turbines at its Carrollton water plant Saturday afternoon, injuring two people as residents were told to stay clear of the area.

According to the tweets and such (it's BREAKING news so we can't be sure) this is Turbine 5. Last year this piece of equipment made news when it failed a test of its capacity to run on diesel fuel. At the time, SWB said that was perfectly okay, though. 

A newly repaired turbine at the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board's Carrollton Plant failed a test run using diesel on Thursday, though it is still "fully functional" when using natural gas as its fuel, the utility announced Thursday.

The Thursday test was aimed at seeing whether the repairs would allow Turbine 5 to be switched to diesel in case its main natural gas fuel supply was interrupted during a storm. But officials concluded that "additional repairs are needed" before it'll be able to switch to that backup fuel supply, according to a news release.

After the diesel test, the turbine was tested with natural gas and "continued to show strong performance," according to the release.

Anyway, today it seems to have exploded.

Before we get too carried away, though, it's important to say up front that this probably doesn't have anything to do with yesterday's "cyberattack" on city computer systems.They still have no idea what that might be related to but, apparently, we don't need any of that fancy crap anyway.

Officials said that taking the computer systems offline could result in inconvenience but that city government would continue to operate.

"One positive about being a city that has been touched by disasters ... is our plans and our activities reflect the fact that we can operate without the internet and without a city network," said Collin Arnold, New Orleans' homeland security director.

We should also clarify that, much the same as the computers are not related to the explosion, this water main break in Algiers, which happened today is unrelated to either of those things.  Nor is any of the above mention situations related at all to the other water main break happening Uptown. This is why there is a boil order in effect in Algiers but none on the East Bank.

That's a lot to keep straight, I know. Just be thankful it's a nice day outside so the power is probably not gonna go out and.. goddammit. 

meanwhile at entergy pic.twitter.com/wCsXqU50r4

— skooks (@skooks) December 14, 2019

Well if it's any consolation, this event is unrelated to the computer hacking which, again, is itself unrelated to the explosion that is unrelated to either of the unrelated water mains.

Also it turns out there is something wrong with Drew Brees's elbow. 

NEW ORLEANS — Saints Quarterback Drew Brees is on the team's injured roster, but isn't expected to sit out the Monday game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Brees was listed at the bottom of the weekly injury roster released by the team Friday. According to the report, his right elbow was injured sometime after Thursday's practice.

But just being on the injury report isn't an indicator that the QB will sit on the sidelines. The report notes he attended the full practice Friday.

It's unclear how the injury happened but if Brees practices again Saturday, he will likely start against the Colts Monday.

So that's pretty mysterious. As far as we know this is not related to the already well known problem with his thumb from earlier in the season. And at this we are practically obligated to point out that neither injury is related to any of the above mentioned infrastructure crises which can be a little bit confusing given that elbow joints do occur in both Drew Brees and in water pipes.

Honestly the best advice at this point is not to think about it too much.  Or, as a wise man once said, "Worry about your frickin meat."

Return of the Mack

The Republican caucus has voted to endorse Rep Sherman Mack to become the next Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives. That doesn't necessarily mean he will become Speaker, though. 39 Republicans voted to endorse him. But he will need 53 votes when the full House decides the matter in January. And there are other candidates.

Republicans came to Baton Rouge for a delegation meeting that was supposed to start at 9:30 a.m., but haggling over the endorsement vote delayed the start time. Mack and Schexnayder were among the candidates that gave presentations before a question-and-answer session, and Mack won 39 votes, which were cast by ballot. That was the exact number he needed to win the endorsement, as it required a two-thirds vote of those present. (Clay) Schexnayder won 17 votes, while Chalmette Republican Rep. Ray Garofalo won one vote.

“I would hope all the Republicans would get behind Sherman Mack now that he has been selected as the Republican delegation nominee,” said state Rep. Jack McFarland, of Jonesboro and one-time speaker candidate who got behind Mack in recent weeks. “That’s the purpose of having that vote.”

If Shexnayder retains his support that would mean the votes of Democratic House members will come into play. This week, John Kennedy and Jeff Landry have been urging the Republican members not to let this happen although it's difficult to imagine it will make much of a difference.  Should the speakership go to Mack or to Shexnayder or to Mack or to some compromise candidate in the event of a deadlock, the Republican agenda is pretty clear. And they all seem to be on the same page more or less. However it is worth noting that Mack is thought by the "Kingmaker" to be somewhat more on that page.

Mack, the preferred candidate of influential GOP donor Lane Grigsby, had emerged as one of two front-runners for the top post in the House, along with state Rep. Clay Schexnayder, of Gonzales. The two both offered up the exact same policy priority, tort reform, a long-held Republican priority that has recently evoked heated battles in the Legislature and in elections.

Pro-business groups and trial attorneys, who are on opposite sides of the issue, poured millions into the governor’s race and legislative elections this year. Business groups were generally successful in electing favorable lawmakers, while Edwards, a Democrat with big support from attorneys, won the governor’s race over Mack’s preferred candidate, Eddie Rispone.

Don't let John Bel's narrow escape fool you. This election was a major right wing landslide and the new legislature is going to reflect that. Whoever the new speaker is, that person's top priority will be "tort reform." Which means they will work to protect corporate entities such as polluting chemical companies or labor abusive contractors such as Citadel Builders from facing any consequences for their crimes.

Which points us to one more reason why Mack might have distinguished himself as the most Republican of this batch of Republicans. Recall that during the previous term, Mack was among the few holdouts agitating against and watering down the set of bipartisan criminal justice reforms the legislature eventually passed. So he's keen on seeing to it that the legal system punishes somebody.  But only certain somebodies.

Seems fine

Just regular doings this week.

Georgia Moving Forward With Mass Voter Purge Monday

ATLANTA — Georgia election officials are set to begin a mass purge of inactive voters from the state’s voting rolls on Monday.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in October released a list of over 313,000 voters whose registrations were at risk of being cancelled, about 4% of the state’s total registered voters. Those voters were mailed notices in November and had 30 days to respond in order to keep their registration intact.

Walter Jones, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said the purge would take place overnight Monday into Tuesday. He said the exact number and names of voters removed wouldn’t be known until then and that more information would be made available after.

 

Wisconsin Judge Orders 200,000 Voters Kicked Off Rolls Ahead Of 2020

A state judge on Friday ordered more than 200,000 voters to be kicked off of voter roles in Wisconsin ahead of the 2020 elections — just three years after President Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes.

The voters were initially listed in an October letter from the Wisconsin Elections Commission as having potentially changed addresses.  They would have been purged in 2021, but a lawsuit from the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty argued the date should be pushed up to before the 2020 election, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Paul Malloy ordered the government to do so, and rejected calls from the commission and the League of Women Voters to stay his order pending an appeal, according to the Sentinel.

Looking forward to the happy new year

Is the Mosaic waste pile too big to fail?

The Mosaic mound of waste crisis is apparently over.  Although maybe someone can explain why this is the acceptable level of comfort.

The movement of the waste pile, which is about 185 feet tall and has its own nighttime warning lights for aircraft, had  raised worries early this year from state and federal regulators concerned about the integrity of a large lake inside the pile. The lake holds hundreds of millions of gallons of acidic and radioactive process water.

Regulators and the company now say the risk of a catastrophic failure and release of the water is minimal.

The movement of parts of the pile's north wall and the earth deep beneath that wall have slowed significantly after a series of emergency measures. The movement went from more than a half-inch per day to one-tenth to one-hundredth of an inch per day, on average, state reports show.

The fertilizer company had slowed production while "responding to" the wobbling wastewater lake which itself may present a problem because...

A halt in production affects the company's ability to manage the supply of the process water on site, company officials have previously said. Rainfall expands that supply while continued fertilizer production causes the water to evaporate.

Leave aside the question of whether or not it's good to just let the "acidic and radioactive" waste evaporate into the open air.  Are they telling us here that the only way to stave off environmental disaster is to make sure production doesn't shut down? 

"The street has changed and we didn't change with it"

The owners of Cafe Rose Nicaud are in their 70s now and ready to cash out. You can't really blame them for that but also it's kind of a shame. Especially so since it seems clear the space will very likely not continue as a cafe in its next incarnation.  We'll know more about what that is when we find out who is the new owner.

Melba Ferdinand, who started the cafe with husband Kenneth, said the couple, now in their 70s, are retiring.

“It’s that time for us, and just as important, the street has changed, and we didn’t change with it,” she said. “That’s not regrettable, we love what we did and how we did it.”

The couple own Café Rose Nicaud’s property, a two-story historic building near the corner of Royal Street. Ferdinand said a sale of the property is in the works, though she could not name the prospective buyer.

Which Motwani is it this time? Also how many Chicken Shacks do we think can fit on Frenchman Street if there even is a limit to such a thing?

Republicans are typically better at using power

When you just clobbered the opposition in an election, the thing to do is use the gains you have won to maximum effect. Otherwise, what will have been the point of doing the clobbering in the first place?   Louisiana Republicans clobbered their opponents in the legislative elections this year. Why would they not demand the maximum benefit of that?

The House Republican delegation meets Friday in Baton Rouge, with the speaker’s race expected to be among the top discussions. 

Negotiations with the 37 Democratic and independent members could assist a speaker candidate to reach the majority needed to win the top job. Talks across the aisle often have helped determine legislative leadership in prior terms.

But Kennedy and Landry called on Republican lawmakers to attend the Friday gathering, choose among themselves “and come up with a consensus candidate we all may rally behind to advance a conservative agenda” when the vote is held Jan. 13 with the start of the new term. 

“Whatever member is able to gather the majority of Republican votes, should be unanimously nominated and supported by our 68 members,” the two GOP leaders wrote.

They didn't have any problem freezing the Governor out of the process last time. Why would we expect them to do anything but freeze out the irrelevant Democrats now?

The Six Million Dollar Men

We now know who picked up the six million dollar contract to operate the ferries.  Linguists will ruminate for decades over the commonalities in corporatespeak nomenclature that produce trash Mcfuture names like "Transdev" (the company RTA just fired from this gig) and "Labmar" the entity who they have just hired.  Labmar is apparently a portmanteau of Laborde Marine. But it also includes these people.

Labmar, which is a joint venture made up of Laborde Marine, Circular Consulting, Royal Engineers & Consultants and MSF Global, beat out HMS Ferries, a firm based in Washington state, for the contract.

The firms' proposals and the scoring sheets from the agency's evaluations of them were not made available Monday.

There are so many Labordes to keep track of in this town. J. Peter Laborde Jr. is one scion of the Ocean Drilling-Tidewater Laborde offshore oil and support services fortune and is pretty much carrying on that Uptown family's traditional business. Royal Engineers are familiar city contractors on several projects including the Canal Street Ferry terminal so now they will be managing the boats that land there. MSF Global is the tech services company who built RTA's app.   

Anyway it looks like one result of the RTA/Metal Shark ferry debacle is a couple of RTA contractors and a classic New Orleans plutocrat get to pick up a bit of a windfall. They say in the article that it also means ferry services could be restored as early as this week.  So everybody wins, really.

I'm guessing Duck Tours?

RTA is supposed to vote this coming Monday on a charter boat operator who will provide temporary ferry service until either the broken down old boats get back up and running or Metal Shark's tin can catamarans ever pass a Coast Guard inspection.

Some of the council members like Kristin Palmer, who district includes the French Quarter and Algiers, displayed signs indicating it's been 67 days with no ferry. "The management system was flawed, deeply flawed," Palmer said. "The operations and maintenance of the ferry system has been deeply flawed. So, we're hear to get some answers."

RTA Board Chairman Flozell Daniels' agreed. "The process was managed poorly," Daniels said. "There was not as much accountability as there should have been The contractor did not do what we thing was the right job to make sure it was managed appropriately."

Daniels promised the RTA is now trying to do better for the public. Two new ferry boats, delivered about 18 months ago have yet to pass Coast Guard inspection. The $10 million vessels were supposed to replace two older boats, neither of which is currently in working condition. People who rely on the ferries to get to work are hurting.

"We've ignored the fact that this is a commuter problem," commuter Fabienne Keenum said. "This is public transportation and I and other service industry and lower income workers rely that ferry to get across."

It's good to see something being done about the "commuter problem," at least. Last week, the city seemed more focused on compensating Algiers Point business owners for our sudden inability to deliver tourists for them to cater to.  There's no doubt those businesses have suffered, of course. But for some reason the city always seems to consider workers as an afterthought. (Did you know, this week, an American city implemented fare-free transit for its riders? Can you even imagine New Orleans RTA currently helmed by a "fare enforcement" specialist considering such a thing?)

Anyway, why won't they name the charter boat operator? Obviously they have somebody in mind.  Please don't tell us we can "Ride The Ducks" across the river anytime soon. You laugh, but thinking about public transit exclusively in terms of amusement rides for tourists is exactly how Mitch Landrieu got us into the Metal Shark problem in the first place.  Here's a public post by Clark Thompson that's been making the rounds on Facebook. I assume it's okay to share here, in a different public part of the internet. He introduces it as a letter to the mayor he wrote in 2016.  Basically, the style of boat that Mitch ordered was never fit to operate on the Mississippi River.

I am not a bidder on the RTA ferry project, therefore I am late to the game, but I recently learned some details of the RFP (for some reason the document is not publicly available).

As a long time ferry user, a USCG licensed captain, a Naval Architect, a builder of aluminum boats, and a principal investigator on marine building materials for Army Research Labratory, I have grave concerns regarding this RFP.

This RFP requests a high speed, catamaran hull, fabricated from aluminum. Such a vessel is well suited to the long runs on the Hudson River, and in Sydney Harbor. Such a request flies in the face of hundreds of years of experience of operations on the Mississippi River.

First, this is a short run, and a high speed boat will have no time to get up to speed before it must slow back down. The medium speed diesel engines will not have time to blow themselves clean, and will end up running dirty. This will in turn lead to considerably higher than projected maintainence costs and downtime. Furthermore, in order to obtain the required speed, larger engines must be selected, further driving up total cost of ownership.

Second, catamarans have poor low speed manuverability. The complicated eddies on the east bank ferry landing require a highly manuverable boat. Bow thrusters are a poor substitute for a proper initial design and are another item of maintainence that will further drive up total cost of ownership and downtime.

Third, aluminum is a poor material for impact. While this lightweight material is acceptable for the garbage strewn waterways of the Hudson or Sydney Harbor, it is ill suited to the frequent impacts with whole trees, oil drums and other large debris carried by the Mississippi river. Look along the waterfront and you will find centuries of experience dictate steel as the prefered material for watercraft along the Mississippi. Only small response boats are build in aluminum here. This flawed material specification will result in a high risk of downtime for the ferry, and much higher than projected total cost of ownership.

I address this message to you as a lover of the city and the river. Our city will suffer with the impact of a bad decision on this contract for 30 years or more and it is critically important to get it right.

Please consider delaying this contract award until the RFP has been corrected to properly request a boat suitable for the Mississippi River operating environment.

We've also noted previously and repeatedly, the various concerns with the contractor itself.  I think this post has most of that in one place.  But the overriding factor seems to be that Mitch thought the catamarans were cool. So that's what he bought.  Let's hope the charter contractor is chosen according to more reasonable criteria.

So many Motwanis

You may be thinking of the different Motawanis that own all of the property in the French Quarter.  But we assure you, these Motwanis who also own all the property in the French Quarter are entirely different Motwanis. 

Though Kama Sutra’s various records list Motwani’s father, Chandru “Charlie” Motwani, as its manager, investigators determined Bobby Motwani actually operated it, the state ATC has previously said. Investigators also established that Rancifer was a club manager despite being a convicted felon who could not legally hold such a job, the ATC said.

Furthermore, the ATC said its investigators collected evidence of “solicitation of sex, lewd acts, underage alcohol sales to patrons as well as teenage dancers performing at the club.”

The ATC — which last year stepped up enforcement of a law that prohibits dancers younger than 21 from performing topless in strip clubs — suspended Kama Sutra’s liquor license on Feb. 17, and according to information online, it has closed permanently.

Kama Sutra in 2017 replaced a strip club named Babe’s Cabaret, which itself closed after drawing ATC citations during an earlier enforcement sweep. Charlie Motwani opened Kama Sutra in his own name after searching in vain for an operator to lease the vacant space.

An attorney for Charlie Motwani said earlier this year that Kama Sutra was separate and distinct from the better-known land and retail holdings of his brother Mike Motwani.

I know, I know, it's difficult to keep up.  But when our entire system is based on... *checks notes* ... the neo-feudal rights of land barons... then understanding the complex lineages of the great families becomes a fundamental civic responsibility.

Speaking of asking the council for stuff

Tomorrow, they're set to vote on the jail expansion. (Yes, it's already been rejected by CPC but City Council always has the last word on these things so tomorrow is the day.) Also please see the below post and everything we've noted about short term rentals since the city began dealing with them to get an idea as to why we don't trust these people to do the right thing ever.

And then go see them tomorrow if you can.  Here's a Twitter thread from the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition explaining what to expect if you are going.

Surely no one could have known

Apparently there was a massive run on short term rental permits just before the new rules went into effect this week. Anyone who got in under the wire is now effectively grandfathered in by right.

The final number of legal rentals could end up being significantly higher by the end of the process, however.

There’s a backlog of more than 1,000 applications that have yet to be processed, and unbuilt projects that could contain another 1,000 commercial units are still on the drawing boards and could come online years down the road.

In both cases, “they were legally allowed (at the time they applied) and will continue to be legal,” said Zach Smith, director of the Department of Safety and Permits.

The imminent approach of the new rules has brought a surge in applications. The city has issued nearly 620 licenses to residential properties since the beginning of September, and nearly 390 more applications are waiting to be reviewed.

This is, of course, exactly what affordable housing advocates said was going to happen if the city did not act to freeze the granting of new permits between the time new rules were passed and the date they went into effect. In fact this is what they chanted out loud in the city council chambers as members were debating the ordinances.  But somehow nobody could have predicted....

The only fair conclusion to draw is this is what the mayor and council wanted all along.  And now they've got what they wanted. Brand new STR hotels are coming soon to Canal Street, and to the former Charity Hospital, and to Mid City along the Lafitte Greenway. The recently passed 2020 city budget is depending on short term rentals to proliferate, in fact, in order to gain revenue via a new tax approved by voters in November.   Your elected leadership has ignored your clear objections and sold you out entirely.  Remember that next time you go to ask them for anything. They hear you just fine. But you aren't important enough to be listened to.

Apologies to the vultures, but the body has already been picked clean

Now that the body of the Kamala For President campaign has officially floated on out to sea, everybody wants to know who benefits. The immediate answer is nobody. The eventual answer might be a little bit different.

The immediate problem is there aren't very many Kamala supporters to divide up at this point. So there isn't much for any candidate to pick up now that she's gone. If Warren was the second choice among most Harris supporters as the polling seems to have indicated, most of those supporters had probably already gone over.  I wouldn't expect Warren to gain an obvious bump now that Harris is out. However it probably helps her down the road.

The game right now is about figuring out where the Biden voters are going to go after Biden inevitably implodes which is what everybody... including a lot of Biden supporters.... expects to happen at some point. Biden is the nominal front runner but his support is softer than conventional punditry suggests. It also is not monolithic. Conventional punditry assumes the majority of the voters considering Biden are "centrists" in search of a conservative Clinton style candidate but this ultimately may not be the case. Because the Biden campaign isn't really about anything besides name recognition, there are many different kinds of  Biden supporters who will end up making many different kinds of choices when the Biden campaign ends.  That doesn't mean the majority of them will land with the most ideologically comparable candidate to Joe Biden.  The Biden campaign isn't about ideology. Voters won't necessarily be drawn to their second choice for the same reasons they have been drawn to Joe.

The main reason the Biden campaign is associated with the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party has to do with its network of surrogates tied to the party power structure. Apparatchiks like Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond for example, are with Biden now because it's the professionally appropriate place for them to be. For the time being, the Biden campaign is the de-facto home of the institutional Democratic Party. A broad base of party insiders are hanging around it at the moment because it suits their personal ambition, or at least their general sense of obligation in some way. After Joe drops out, they're all free to move on, of course. But, unlike the free agent Biden voters among the general public, the party insider class is much more likely to land on a single second choice.

Early on, Kamala was a good bet to become the safe Biden replacement. She cultivated a similar appeal to conservatives and professional class Democrats. And she was never shy about courting wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists. Despite all this she never got it together for a bunch of complicated reasons. Last week's NYT feature shines a light on some of the inside baseball.  There were other problems as well with regard to the "messaging" and "positioning" that cynical political analysts like to fixate on.  But when you boil all of that down what you find is an elitist, conservative, corporate-friendly prosecutor failing to convince enough donors that she can lie her way around that effectively. When you think about it, it's pretty wild that the main idea behind Harris for President in the first place was that a lot of people liked the faces she made on TV during the Kavanaugh hearings. But then again, the current President is a game show host so who are we to say that this is any less valid as a marketing gimmick. Anyway it didn't work out.

Now that she's gone, the game is still about catching the windfall when Biden drops out. Kamala's goal was to be the obvious landing place for ex-Bidenites when the time came. But her campaign never demonstrated any growth as Kamala-curious Bidenites started kicking the tires on Warren instead. And in recent weeks, it looks like voters she might also have targeted began gravitating toward Mayor Pete.

But the bulk of the voters waiting to move are still tentatively with Biden. Which is why having Kamala out of the way is probably helpful to Warren down the road a bit. I also believe it opens up some possibilities for Bernie but nobody seems to want to hear that right now. Maybe we'll come back to that later, though.

Of course Bernie will never be the new favorite of the party insiders once Biden is out.  That is a thing that Pete and Warren are battling over behind the scenes. Expect that little campaign will only intensify now.

Coach O: "Not me, us"

Go read this ESPN feature on the undefeated LSU head coach.  I hope Coach O wins ten national titles before he's through.

"My dad always told me, 'Son, you have to do everything twice,'" says Orgeron, who called some of his former assistants to apologize. "You live and learn. If you want it bad enough, you'll change, and I always wanted to be a head coach. I wanted to be a successful head coach, and I had to try it my way first to see if it would work. In those years I was out from Ole Miss, I just wrote stuff down every day. I changed, and it was a process. ... I had to learn to be a head coach."

For starters, he says he learned to treat people better. That meant handling players as if they were his sons and treating assistants the way he'd want to be treated, with respect. If he saw something wrong, "I'd bring the coach to my office and talk to him like a man," rather than airing things out publicly.

Next, he wanted to cultivate a leadership style that wouldn't be defined by anyone's self-interest. He had seen selfishness of players and coaches creep in during his time as an assistant at USC and LSU, and vowed to create an environment where that attitude couldn't exist.

"I see myself coaching from within," he says. "I don't want to coach from above. I don't want it to be me looking down on everyone else. Na-ah. I want it to be all of us together."

The paranoid style in policing

It is a sad enough statement that we have to note this past weekend's Canal Street shooting is far from the first such incident in recent memory. It's not the first shooting to occur in a large crowd during a major event. We can easily call to mind previous similar episodes during Mardi Gras along the parade route, or during a Second Line, or on Canal or Bourbon Street during a big game or holiday weekend.  We literally hate to see it.  But we have seen a lot of it.

So we can say that it's frusrating or we can say it's depressing, but the one thing we can't say about it at all is that it is surprising. And, if we are the police, who are professionally tasked with responding to these incidents, our training and experience should prevent us from lapsing into paranoid fantasyland when they occur. And yet, here we are.

Ferguson said officers were on the scene immediately after gunshots started to ring out, as patrols had been beefed up for the game. He said that officers at first thought they were being fired upon since the shots rang out so close to them. No police officers were injured, Ferguson said.

What. Why? Why would they think that?  When, in the long sad history of gunfire breaking out in a New Orleans special event crowd, have police ever been the intended target?  It says something about the NOPD's culture that this is their first thought. It says they instinctively view the public as an enemy threat. 

Without getting off onto a tangent about the fundamental nature of policing and criminal justice as an institution of state control, let's agree, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing as an equitable police department culture and that such a thing does NOT encourage an adversarial relationship with the community at large.  Accepting that premise, this reaction should be a clear warning sign that NOPD is falling alarmingly short of the standard there.   

Put the mayor under house arrest

The state supreme court says the city owes $35 million to people issued illegitimate traffic camera tickets between 2008 and 2010. The ruling is somewhat technical. During those years the money was collected by the Department of Public Works instead of NOPD in violation of the City Charter. A different suit challenging the constitutionality of all camera tickets is still pending in federal court so stay tuned for that.

Stay tuned also to find out if anybody ever sees an actual refund. As we know, the city is often very late paying out judgements when it isn't ignoring them altogether.  However, there was one time, not too long ago in fact, when the courts decided to play hardball. In 2015, Civil District Court judge Kern Reese came very close to placing Mitch Landrieu under house arrest in an effort to force the city to finally make good on its decades old debt of back pay to firefighters. The state supreme court stopped that at the last minute but the circus seems to have served as a catalyst for the mayor to finally arrange a deal to pay the firefighters.

Anyway Cantrell is quoted in this article pledging this and other judgments will be paid "subject to appropriation" which means, as soon as we find the money, whenever that is. But remember theoretically the judges could still arrest Cantrell, or more likely some future mayor, if there comes a time when they think the foot dragging has gone on too long.

We need to kill the term "culture bearer"

I cringe every time I see it used. A "culture bearer" is not some separate class of person.  We're all culture bearers. All of us here participating in society together, whether we like it or not, are creating a culture together. Right now it's not a particularly healthy culture. In part this is because of our failure to understand what is happening and to whom. What's happening in Treme is a crime. But it's not just something happening to "culture bearers." It's happening to all of us.

Like the second lines that pass through the neighborhood, those who used to call Tremé home say the culture has become transient. Leaving it with no sense of community.

“All the juice, or the oxygen rather, has been sucked out of the room,” says Al Jackson, owner of the Tremé Petit Jazz Museum. “The culture, oxygen, the children, the raison d’etre that we once woke up in the morning and lived for. It’s gone.”

Jazz Vocalist John Boutté says the community was effervescent. You could hear kids playing and laughing, you’d see people talking on the steps and everyone said hello.
Today, Boutté believes he’ll never see that part of Tremé again.

“The folks aren’t there anymore and unless you bring those people back, you’ll never have that part of Tremé again,” Boutté said.

What's happened to Treme is a crime of capitalism. It is the same crime that is happening to every neighborhood to some degree. It is the same crime that is happening to most cities.  Land is hoarded by real estate speculators. Housing prices and rents are artificially inflated. Wages and benefits are stagnant for most working class people so they can no longer keep up with the escalating cost of living. People take on second jobs or part time jobs or jobs where schedules are unpredictable so their time for leisure (or "creative labor" if you prefer the more commodified term) is limited. 

Meanwhile, the aforesaid real estate speculation encourages the city to crack down on institutions and mores that might disrupt profits such as substandard lawn maintenance, corner bars, and outdoor musical performance. So not only is time for creative leisure reduced but so are the physical spaces where it formerly flourished are also taken away. Those that remain are under increasingly intrusive police surveillance which further intrudes on our social space to think and act creatively.  These are sinister processes meant to commodify basic human freedom.  Everyone has the right to be creative. Everyone has the right to spend their leisure time appreciating or conversing with, the fruits of that creativity. It is our collective creative leisure, the act of creating but also just enjoying what others create that generates authentic "creative culture." 

Despite what the oligarchs who control the extractive tourism economy would have us believe, that isn't something they can put that in a bottle and sell in a shop. They can't manufacture it at New Orleans & Co. no matter how much public money the city dumps into their hands. "Culture bearer" is a term they encourage, though, because it conjures a specific product they're already primed to profit from. It isolates a bland branded and frozen version of New Orleans Culture and limits it to something they can control.

We all bear the culture. It is ours to share, to replicate, to elaborate on, and, most crucially, to evolve. But we can't do that when the marketers, hoteliers, land speculators and the homeowners association product who is currently our mayor conspire to steal what we've already created and deny our right to continue as before.  That's what's happened to Treme. And it's going to keep happening until we recognize that a threat against a "culture bearer" is a threat against us all.  A good way to start is to dispense with using that term at all anymore. 

Let's all cosplay against homelessness

Hope everybody had a good time at the LARP.

On a balmy November night in New Orleans, 230 people filled the rooms and courtyard of Covenant House, a residence for homeless youth on the edge of the French Quarter.

They came from as far away as Texas, Alabama and Mississippi. Starting around 6:30 p.m., they placed large pieces of cardboard on the sidewalk around the building, and later that night they slept shoulder-to-shoulder in sleeping bags on the cardboard for the center’s eighth "sleep-out," an annual event that raises both funds and awareness for the city’s homeless youth.

By dawn the next morning, the event had raised $610,000 in pledges, over 10% of the facility’s $6 million annual operating budget.

I don't know, guys. Seems like the donors could have just mailed in some checks without going through the little demonstration. Better yet, we could just tax these people a bit more so we can fund true public services that aide and house the needy instead of just allowing them to throw their money at a corrupt religious non-profit like Covenant House. But since like 70 percent of the local economy relies on flattering the well off into thinking they are the real heroes anyway, I guess it's a natural fit.

Reason for the season

Happy Thanksgiving to the 46,000 Louisianians just booted off of Medicaid this month because they didn't answer a letter.  Maybe that means none of them need it anymore. But it probably doesn't mean that.

Imagine if the system just provided health care to anyone who needed it instead of constantly making them prove their eligibility or jump through bureaucratic hoops designed to discourage them from even seeking care in the first place.  Crazy talk, I know.

Dangling

Hey good news! The dangling crane is dangling more safely now.

A crane dangling at the site of the collapsed Hard Rock Hotel in downtown New Orleans has been stabilized and the surrounding evacuation zone has been reduced in size, city officials announced late Friday.

Engineers told the New Orleans Fire Department that an operation to strap the damaged crane and boom that loomed over Canal Street to the core tower of the building had been completed, the city said.

Because the crane is now in safer condition, the city is shrinking the size of the evacuation zone around the building.

Going forward, the sidewalk on the upriver side of Canal Street that has been closed since shortly after the collapse of the 18-story hotel the morning of Oct. 12 will be open.

That's great news for anyone who wants to get a tattoo or brunch on the upriver side of Canal Street as businesses that provide those things can now reopen.

Meanwhile there isn't great news for everybody, though. Some are still dangling precariously as ever.

Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, a Honduran national who was arrested by Border Patrol agents two days after the Oct. 12 collapse, was moved by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement on Nov. 15 to an immigration holding facility at the Alexandria International Airport in central Louisiana.

ICE’s charter airline uses the Alexandria airport as a hub for deportation flights to South and Central America.

Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said he couldn’t comment on possible plans to deport Ramirez because the agency does not discuss future operations “for security reasons.”

Advocates and attorneys warn that deporting Ramirez could seriously hamper an ongoing Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the cause of the hotel collapse, both because Ramirez has spoken out about unsafe conditions and deficiencies at the work site and because other undocumented immigrants who were working at the site are now fearful about speaking with federal investigators.

The collapse killed three workers and injured dozens more, including Ramirez.

  Ramirez's wife believes he may be deported as soon as today.

Update:  #Actually they aren't deporting him today, says ICE.  But there isn't much more information than that.  The New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice is asking for your help in trying to halt the deportation .

Might be a good time to do some business with St. John Parish

The school board there just denied Marathon Oil a tax exemption that will result in something like $25 million in revenue for the district. This is good news, of course. The state has been handing over massive public subsidies to petrochemical interests for decades. Thanks to John Bel's decision to revert ITEP authorization to the local level, the public is only now beginning to recoup their losses. Had Eddie Rispone been elected Governor last week... and he very nearly was... we'd be preparing to forfeit all of this progress.

At the same time, knowing what we know about how local government works, we can't help but wonder about the inevitable side effects of this.

But the $25 million is small potatoes compared to larger, expiring exemptions looming on the horizon for St. John Parish.

Although Marathon is the parish's biggest taxpayer, it also enjoys industrial tax breaks on a whopping $3.1 billion in property. Those exemptions are set to expire next year, which would mean a $44 million windfall in parish property tax collections.

That would push St. John's total property tax revenue, now around $55 million, according to the Assessor’s Office, to close to $100 million.

That's a lot of money about to suddenly fall into the laps of some heretofore small time criminals... erm... elected officials.  No telling where it all ends up eventually.  But, still, it's important to remember that even if a school board member's brother-in-law gets a chunk of the money sunk into a new school building, well, that is still a new school building. And it's all a much better way to blow money than on kickbacks to Marathon Oil.

Meanwhile at the Convention Center

Quick addendum to the city budget discussion from this week. That process involved some heated discussions, anxiety, and even threats resulting in cuts to some departments so that we could afford to hire more police.  But was any of this necessary? When we look over at the Convention Center's finances, we do have to wonder.

As usual, the convention center expects to have a budget surplus in 2020. Next year the center will get $18.7 million more than what it needs to operate, according to budget documents presented to the authority. That’s in large part due to the $66.4 million in tax revenue — mostly from hotel taxes — that the Convention Center expects to haul in for 2020.

The much celebrated "Fair Share" deal that permits this to go on is a complete fraud. Unless we are able to get that point across, it will only serve to set back progress in the continuing fight to get these oligarchs to pay what they owe.  Until that happens, prepare to watch public money which could go to relieve fiscal dilemmas like the one we just experience be used, instead, to pay prison labor contractors.  

Also on Wednesday, it was revealed that the convention center has gone forward with a $183,000 purchase for an iron fence from Prison Enterprises — a division of the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections that sells services and products manufactured and provided by Louisiana prison inmates.

Do do do do do do

Well now there's a lawsuit.  Surprised it took this long.

The suit, filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court by Algiers resident Skip Gallagher, claims the Regional Transit Authority shirked its duty when it ignored Gallagher's requests for more information on what's been keeping the boats from service on the Mississippi River.

I like that the person suing over the seaworthiness of the boats is named Skip. Anyway, assuming most people reading this already know enough of the Metal Shark background saga now. So let's skip to the end of this story where we see Skip is actually asking about the part that's been missing from that so far.

Gallagher wanted to know more about the whole ordeal, including what RTA and Transdev executives were saying to each other about the boats via email.

He also wanted to know who was responsible for selecting Metal Shark and whether that team had any expertise in boat construction management.

We've learned a lot about why what Metal Shark built can't pass inspection. But what we haven't heard enough about yet is why was that faulty product ordered in the first place? We did note back in May a pair of stories about RTA board member Al Herrara, who was forced to resign over a conflict of interest wherein a company he owned sold parts to Metal Shark.  Herrara went on to allege “questionable bidding and billing practices" at RTA in response.  I don't know if anything else has been learned since then.  Maybe Skip's lawsuit will find some emails about it or something.

Meanwhile, the city says they are looking at ways they might be able to compensate Algiers business owners affected by the ferry outage. No one has any idea what can be done for transit riders who may have once relied on these ferries.

Dire consequences

A couple months ago, New Orleans Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño told a City Council budget committee there would be "dire consequences" if the council did not agree to "roll forward" its property tax millages this year.

Perhaps the biggest criticism was around what Montaño said the consequences would be if they failed to roll forward. One potential budget cut, according to the presentation, would be laying off 500-plus city employees. Another was a 10 percent budget cut for all city departments. The options also included pay cuts across the city and cutting personnel in the police department, fire department and EMS.

After it became clear that councilmembers were unconvinced by what Helena Moreno correctly identified as a "scare tactic,"  the mayor's office lowered its demand by 50 percent. "I don't make idle threats," Cantrell warned.

Her administration has warned of things such as slower response times from police and fire, cuts to recycling, closing down rec centers or libraries -- or even longer waits to fill potholes if they can't get the extra money.

“I don’t make idle threats,” Cantrell said. “I’m telling you if we don’t see a modest roll forward -- $6.9 million? Come on. Yes, we will have to look at how we can make cuts.”

The possibility of a half-roll was still on the table come November when the mayor took a new scare tactic to the public as she argued for a 3 mill tax increase which was on the local ballot during the state election runoffs this past Saturday.

Voters were unmoved by the idle threats, however, and the property tax ballot measure failed by almost 9,000 votes. It's particularly telling that it did, too. Because all of the rest of Cantrell's "Ballot of Yes" items she campaigned for passed and all of the legislative candidates she endorsed won their races as well, this result didn't mean voters were rejecting her, specifically. It just meant they didn't buy her pitch on this particular issue.

Maybe they read the DSA voter guide.  There they would have found one of the more cogent arguments against the new tax. Maybe it's authors won't mind if we share a couple paragraphs of that here.

The new taxes would have serious impacts on the city’s cost-burdened renters and homeowners. Typically landlords pass on all or most of the cost of such increases to tenants. According to HousingNOLA, 41 percent of New Orleans homeowners are cost burdened and one third of all owner-occupied homes earn below the median income. Meanwhile, our property tax system remains riddled with exemptions handed out to developers, manufacturers, and non-profits that need to be revisited or eliminated.

The mayor claims there is no other way to raise the $10.2 million the new tax is estimated to bring in but her 2020 budget proposal includes $4.7 million in highly questionable appropriations to police and surveillance and has left the door open to funding Sheriff Gusman’s proposed jail expansion. We recognize the city’s fiscal situation is tenuous. But we also question why proposed remedies favor the privileges of wealth and bolster the police-surveillance state while heaping even more excessive burdens on poor people. We can do better.

That part about landlords passing property tax hikes on to renters, by the way, is definitely not an idle threat. My rent just went up 50 bucks this month based on the recent reassessments alone. I expect it may have been more had the millage gone up too.

Anyway nobody has to worry about that now because the final budget approved by the City Council this week is based on a deal among the council and various taxing authorities that amounts to a net cut in the overall city controlled property tax rate.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the City Council, which has the final say on the lion’s share of taxes in the parish, are close to finalizing an agreement that would cut the city's overall tax rate by about 5%, juggling about a dozen individual millages to come up with a deal that would, in effect, give up any revenue the city stood to gain from this year’s reassessment.

This is actually even more complicated than it already looks. So, apologies to everyone whose eyes are already glazed over. To begin with,thanks to the assessments, a lot of people's taxes are going to go up regardless of what the rate is. 

Exactly what that means for a property’s tax bill depends on the details of the city’s deal and where the property is located, since some taxing bodies cover only portions of the city.

And how well a taxpayer makes out also depends on what happened during this year’s reassessment.

Owners whose property values stayed the same will pay less. Those who saw only a slight increase will pay around the same amount as they did in 2019. But the tens of thousands of homeowners who saw substantial jumps in their property values will face significantly higher tax bills.

There's also the matter of the school board which is one of the independent authorities who voted to roll its millage forward thus capturing the reassessment windfall. Not only will this contribute to an overall tax hike for many residents, it also constitutes a shift in costs formerly assumed by the state onto local taxpayers.

The School Board on Tuesday voted unanimously to roll its tax rate forward all the way to its current level, in part because the higher assessments will trigger a $9.1 million automatic cut in state funding for the city's schools.

The roll forward will fill the gap left by that cut and provide an additional $15.1 million for New Orleans schools on top of that.

But leaving that aside, the crux of the deal that's been struck, is the library and the Audubon Commission have agreed to reductions this year in order that S&WB, the Fire Department, and NOPD can "roll forward" to pull in new revenue. That's not an ideal solution. But it's also not a disaster.  The actual numbers aren't available but this article strongly suggests that departments taking cuts can cover their expenses with reserve funds or other revenues.

For now, this will have to do. Streets and drainage improvements need funding. We'd prefer the city find the money it needs by reducing the amount we spend on police, not boosting it. Ideally, cities like New Orleans with critical infrastructure needs would have access to billions of dollars in Federal aid as part of a Green New Deal program.  But that's all in the future. Or at least we hope it is. Otherwise, the consequences could be dire, indeed.

Festival Marketport

What if we made a Jax Brewery except it was waay out of everybody's way, and airplanes landed there?  Would that bring in the locals?

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport will join a handful of airports across the country that allow people who do not have airline tickets to access the concourse, where nearly all of the new terminal’s much-discussed concessions are located. Right now, a boarding pass is required to pass through security to eat, drink or shop in the concourses.

The program, called MSY Guest Pass, is slated to begin after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, though a precise date has not been announced.

Aviation Director Kevin Dolliole said the program is aimed at giving the public a different way to access the $1 billion terminal.

I don't know about you but I can't wait to drive (there is no other reliable transit option) all the way out to Kenner, wait in the terrible traffic bottleneck, pay to park, wait in a TSA line to get frisked, and order a $12 beignet or something from a food court.  Is that the idea?

This article says it's kind of a trend in other cities.  It seems like a dumb one on the surface. But there must be some angle to it that isn't obvious.  I wonder what that could be.

We'll never know what happened to Epstein

I mean, sure, that's always been obvious. But when John is free to go around making John type wisecracks about it, that's when you know the thing is hopeless.

The real problem with caring for the homeless is there's no money in it

Ozanam Inn is being kicked out of its building after 64 years. The reason is it turned out, finally, to have been bad business?

According to its tax filings, St. Vincent de Paul over the past four years has seen a sharp step-down in gross receipts, from nearly $900,000 in the year ended September 30, 2016 to below $600,000 in the year to end September, 2018, the latest tax year filed.

Expenses have consistently outstripped revenues, and in the latest year, the accounts show an unexplained $311,000 write off in the value of its assets which, together with the deficit, meant assets fell to $1.75 million from $2.1 million.

The society at one point operated a half dozen thrift shops in New Orleans, but this has contracted in recent years so that it now operates just one shop on the Westbank, on 4th Street in Marrero.

The article points a bunch of fingers at the St.VdP director. And who are we to say anything about that situtation. But the bigger question here is, was booting a homeless shelter out in favor of a "hotel and parking garage" during a housing crunch really the best solution?  Who decides these things anyway?

Maybe it's just plain old capitalism at work where all parties compete on perfectly equal footing in the fair and free market.  Right?

Demma went on to say that Ozanam Inn would have the right of first refusal to buy the Camp Street building if they could come up with $100,000 "earnest monies" and reach a deal on the final amount.

Last month, Demma told members that 843 Camp Street had been sold to an unnamed developer. Documents showed that the building was sold for a nominal $100 and that St. Vincent de Paul issued a $2.69 million mortgage note to Excel Advertising Group LLC, a company registered in Delaware, which is the official buyer.

Ozanam says their $3.5 million offer was rejected in favor of this $100 dollar up front investment. So whose money is that?  Stay tuned because it is a mystery.

Although the story does provide us with a tantalizing lead.

Excel lists Michael Boudreaux, a New Orleans property management agent, as its sole officer and he signed the sale document. Also, John Holmes of True Title in Metairie was listed as the buyer's authorized agent on the sale. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Several people who have been privately briefed and didn't want to be quoted by name said the owner is a long-time New Orleans developer who has built hundreds of condominium units, sub-divisions and commercial real estate in and around the city, including the conversion of a landmark riverside historic property into condominiums.

LOL, they obviously know who it is. Is it Sean Cummings? That sounds a lot like Sean Cummings. It could be several other people too. (I think the suggestion that it could be Marcel Wisznia is kind of elegant since it makes sense that the guy building a "co-living" development would be interested in a homeless shelter.) But why give us this many clues and not just say who it is?  I'll bet John Georges knows who it is.

John Georges, who along with his wife, Dathel, owns The Times-Picayune|The New Orleans Advocate, said the company — a direct neighbor of Ozanam Inn — is interested in jointly developing the proposed parking lot.

"We would certainly welcome the redevelopment, and I was happy to hear Ozanam Inn has opportunities for other locations that should be announced before the end of the year as part of a master plan to address the homeless situation," said Georges.

So instead of Ozanam buying the building for $3.5 million, we have this alternate transaction where it transfers (for $100!) to a mystery "long-time New Orleans developer" and John Georges is possibly cut in on it in some way.  Of course that looks real bad if it means actually booting homeless people onto the street. We're gonna need some help to keep that from happening.  Luckily the city has already stepped in to facilitate.

Ozanam Inn's plans depend on a broad agreement with homelessness agencies being negotiated with the city of New Orleans.

"We are aware of the recent sale of Ozanam Inn's building, and we're in close contact with their staff and board of directors as they determine their next steps," said a spokesperson for the City, who declined to comment on talk among homeless advocates that city land on Poydras Street near South Claiborne Avenue had been earmarked as an alternative location for Ozanam Inn and other housing.

This looks like it's been in the works for quite a while. Rich developer gets a free building. Local magnate gets a piece. The city gets to maximize the property's revenue potential. All they had to do was scoot a decades-old charitable institution out of the way. Remains to be seen what the city's homeless advocates and their clients end up with out of the deal.  We sure hope it's a "fair share."

Pretty late in the game to be asking questions now

Did Kristin Palmer express support for Mayor Cantrell's Fair Sham bargain while the push was on to pass its enabling bills through the legislature? At the time it seemed like area politicos were presenting a united front. If an elected person had any questions at the time, I'd like to think I would have noticed.  I had plenty. But it sure felt like I was alone in that.

Anyway all that stuff passed months ago and now we have to deal with the consequences.  Which is why it's frustrating to see that now we're hearing complaints that should have been raised way back when.

The merger will transfer $8 million in annual funding and all but one or two of NOTMC’s employees to New Orleans & Company, NOTMC CEO Mark Romig told the New Orleans City Council at a Friday meeting. In Romig’s proposed 2020 budget, $1.8 million would remain with NOTMC for some lingering responsibilities, while $3.9 million would go to the city for infrastructure funding.

But some council members expressed concerns about accountability for the public dollars and other remaining uncertainties with the merger.

Councilwoman Kristin Palmer, who sits on the board of NOTMC along with council members Jay Banks, Helena Moreno, and Jason Williams, complained earlier in the week that she had yet to see a written plan for the merger.

“There are three other council members who sit on NOTMC and we have repeatedly requested information on any type of transition in writing, which we have yet to receive,” she said at a Monday meeting. “And meanwhile, [New Orleans and Company] is like absorbing and hiring all the NOTMC employees and we don’t know what’s going on.”

What's going on is what was always in the plan since the deal was first announced. The public money that used to go to NOTMC (a public board) will now go to NO and Co. (a private entity) where there will be far less public oversight. This is in no way surprising to anyone.

Of course city council wouldn't really have much reason to speak up until it came time to start hashing out the budgetary implications of all of this. Which is why we're seeing this discussion now. In the same article we see there are also concerns about NO and Co.'s share of the short term rental tax passed over the weekend. Interestingly, the city still has a bit of leverage to play.

In July, the council voted to put the tax on the November ballot. But before it did, council members raised similar concerns about accountability and public input.

“The accountability and transparency question, the mayor recognizes that’s a concern for the council,” Cantrell’s Chief of Staff John Porciau said at the July meeting. “It’s a concern for her.”

If the ballot measure is approved on Saturday, it wouldn’t institute the tax right away. It would simply give the council the ability to levy a 6.75 percent tax. The council would have to vote again to actually put it into effect. It would also have to approve a cooperative endeavor agreement that would funnel the 25 percent from the city to New Orleans & Company.

“That is where we have our say regarding the transparency piece,” said Councilwoman Helena Moreno. “It’s on the CEA for that 25 percent that we’re going to have some control in making sure those tax dollars are used properly.”

She also said that the council has the option to refuse to approve the agreement until they find it to be acceptable. Until then, she said, the money would go into an escrow account that’s out of reach of New Orleans & Company.

It's a bit of a cop-out, though, for City Council members to wait until there's nothing they can do about these issues until they have to deal with the fall-out. The "accountability and transparency question" isn't new.  It was well understood even at the time that the mayor was negotiating the deal. Council is dealing with it now because she conceded on points her predecessor would not.

A push to merge the two groups in 2010 floundered over many of the same issues. Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu objected because he wanted the organization that resulted from the merger to be a public body, not a private one like New Orleans & Company, according to the Times-Picayune. The NOTMC board ultimately voted against the merger in 2010.

Having given up the fundamental issue of whether or not public money should fall under public governance, we've backed ourselves into a position where we're hoping to negotiate over a small portion of what we still sort of control.  Maybe someone could have asked about that sooner.

Whatever keeps everybody miserable

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court has found a creative way to deal with its unconstitutional "debtors prison" situation. Rather than give up entirely on setting cash bail and collecting punitive fines and fees from poor people, they've instead been taking that money and putting it aside in escrow. It isn't useful to anyone there. The money had been going to cover the court's operating expenses but, last year, a bump in their allocation from the city budget was meant to eliminate the need for that. Which leads us to suspect that some of these judges are still setting bail out of spite.

Meanwhile, advocates say that even if there were no conflict of interest, (Judge Harry) Cantrell is ignoring his constitutional obligation to consider whether defendants can actually make bail.

In a federal court petition filed Friday, they cited the case of Miles Moran, a 28-year-old homeless man from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, who’s accused of unauthorized entry into a Walgreens drugstore on Canal Street.

Cops say Moran has a history of shoplifting at the store. On this occasion, they claim he walked out with four Bud Light Lime-a-Ritas, two bags of Lay’s potato chips and two Cokes. The total cost of the goods was $21.28 — but the unauthorized entry charge is a felony.

Cantrell set Moran’s bail at $1,250, then slashed it to $300. Still, attorneys from the Orleans Public Defenders say Moran, who’s been unemployed since December, can’t afford any cash bail. They’ve asked the judge to release Moran with no bail to Odyssey House, which offers residential treatment for people with substance abuse problems.

In a written ruling, Cantrell stood by his decision to impose a money bail, citing a pending municipal attachment and warrant for Moran from Kenner. Public defenders said Kenner wouldn't even have bothered to pick up Moran from the New Orleans jail.

Clearly the judges need additional incentive to treat people humanely. One solution offered today during City Council budget hearings would have made their budgetary supplement contingent on eliminating the bail and fees but the judges say their hands are tied by state law.  Instead, it looks like the Council resolved to create a "task force" to figure out ways to lobby Baton Rouge. Good luck talking to the incoming Republican supermajorities about bail reform.

Helena Moreno floated a different idea.

As a "solution" to federal court rulings against LA judges setting & taking #cashbail, Councilmember @HelenaMorenoLA suggests "the city could be the one collecting [cash bail]." How would this be better for poor New Orleanians? We must #endcashbail, not change who is robbing us. pic.twitter.com/q4hxDT6pbh

— VOTE-NOLA (@FIPVOTENOLA) November 13, 2019

The problems with that should be obvious and VOTE says it well enough in that tweet.  But it turns out this is an actual thing under consideration.

One option the court is considering is to ask the Legislature to pass a law that would direct money raised from bail fees to the city, which would continue to make up for the resulting revenue shortfall. The money in escrow could also be sent to the city.

Rafael Goyeneche, president of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, said he thought that would solve the conflict of interest problem.

So there's your solution. Keep right on collecting exorbitant bail, fines and fees from poor people. But make sure to "Fair Share" the proceeds out to City Hall and everything's golden.