We're finally doing something about the terrorists. On Wednesday, March 23rd, your New Orleans City Council will begin an inquiry into an ongoing insurrection that threatens the security of our civic life.
NEW ORLEANS - The City Council's Utility, Cable, Telecommunications, and Technology Committee will be meeting next week with Entergy New Orleans to discuss animal-related outages at Entergy substations. The meeting comes after several reported outages caused by animals last week, including one which resulted in outages for over 10,000 customers in the downtown, CBD, and Mid-City areas.
Councilmember Morrell released the following statement in regards to the meeting: “Last week, over 10,000 New Orleans ratepayers lost power for hours because of a single bird, resulting in business closures. In light of the downtown outage and subsequent Lakeview power outages caused by a squirrel, I have requested for members of Entergy New Orleans to come before the Utility Committee to address the issue of animal-related system failures.
Incidents of power outages are unfortunately all too familiar to the residents of this city. These animal-related outages are not just mere inconveniences. They are hardships that grind our city to a halt.
When a bird topples key power sources for three years in a row, it’s time to take a deep dive into what is currently being done to prevent incidents like this, and which areas need improvement. If Entergy is going to request a rate increase, they should be able to explain how small animals repeatedly put thousands of customers in the dark.”
Reading that, one wonders if JP is really digging deep enough. It's true the creatures have waged a campaign of sabotage against our infrastructure. But their terror activities extend beyond the scope of just three annual bird attacks. Channel 6 put together a cheeky little graphic on the fly last week to try and get the point across.
Based off WDSU's records, there have been 5 incidents of animal-related power outages since 2013. There was also one non-animal related incident involving a balloon. Weather related outages are not included in this graphic. https://t.co/h2OObo3sJm pic.twitter.com/nizrMrFkRM
— wdsu (@wdsu) March 9, 2022
But that doesn't really capture the whole picture. We won't presume to provide a full catalog either. But just to give you an idea of what a few moments of casual googling and hazy memories will turn up, here are two outages allegedly caused by raccoons in 2008 and 2012. Here is the squirrel JP's memo refers to. Here is another squirrel in 2016. Here is one in Baton Rouge last year. The WDSU graphic references the famous cat and the mylar balloons (2017, 2018, and 2021.)
Technically a balloon is not an animal but we cannot rule out the possibility of them having been deployed through one or another creature's deliberate intervention. One hangs around here long enough and one begins to get the impression that the animals might be up to something. The peacocks might vandalize your car. Feral hogs are undermining your levees. Alligators are up to all sorts of mischief in your streets, under your streets, in your dumpsters. This weekend, our most prominent animal insurrectionist celebrated his seventh birthday to considerable internet fanfare. Clearly his growing cult of personality is emboldening others in his movement.
With so much evidence of an organized animal uprising underway, you might think stewards of critical infrastructure like Entergy would invest more in countermeasures. But, as we've learned time and again, improved service is not the focus of Entergy's investment strategy. Profit hoarding is. And, as we've also learned time and again, that isn't a model conducive to producing reliable public service.
Entergy has aggressively resisted efforts by regulators, residents and advocates to improve its infrastructure. The company’s restoration of its equipment after major storms didn’t prioritize the grid modernization that industry experts say could limit the scope and duration of power outages. Instead of shifting toward renewable energy, Entergy doubled down on building plants that emit greenhouse gases — the same pollution that has made hurricanes more intense.
ENO is uniquely positioned among American utilities to protect its interests because of how it’s regulated. The subsidiary is one of only two investor-owned utilities overseen by a city council; utilities typically are regulated by a state-level commission. That setup has often left the New Orleans City Council without sufficient resources and expertise to effectively regulate the monopoly electric utility, according to interviews with some residents, council members and former city officials.
How frustrating is it for City Council to regulate this monopoly? Earlier this month, we learned that they can't even hire a consulting firm to help with their analysis. What's the matter? Don't these accountants want to work? There's real beans to be counted here!
The New Orleans City Council is planning to rebid a contract to conduct a management audit of Entergy New Orleans, after its first attempt received zero responses from interested firms. The management audit was announced in September, in the wake of Hurricane Ida and the weeks-long power outages it caused in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana.
“To be candid we’re nowhere,” said Councilman and utility committee chair JP Morrel in an interview. “We got zero responses.”
The lack of responsive companies is not isolated to this one contract. In recent months, the council has faced roadblocks finding companies to fill several contracts vital to its role as regulator of Entergy New Orleans.
Morrell called it “frustrating” and “jarring.”
These consulting contracts are typically the most lucrative the council can offer to anyone for anything. All last summer we kept hearing complaints from political and business elites that "free money from the government" was keeping too many people from going to work. But here we have the government with all this free money to give away to an auditing firm for, let's face it, not very much actual work, and there are no takers to be found.
The Lens asked JP Morrell why he thinks that is. He can't say what is keeping national firms out of the running but he does have an interesting theory about what crowds out local bidders.
He said Entergy’s outsized influence in the region’s economy may have also played a role. He was clear that he had no evidence of actual active “economic intimidation” from Entergy, but said that companies that stand to work with Entergy may see the council contracts as a liability.
“Someday you might want to do work with Entergy,” Morrell said. “There’s always going to be the idea both from law firms and accounting firms locally, that if you do work for the council on one of these pieces, you might conflict yourself out of any future work with Entergy.”
Someday you might want to do work with Entergy. It's true, the revolving door between local government and the utility giant has been in operation for as long as we can remember. Just a few examples would include the following:
Former Entergy CEO Charles Rice who resigned in 2018 following a series of scandalous events including the "paid actors" incident, a contentious rate case negotiation, and at least the appearance of insider trading activity. Rice has been in and out of local government, most notably as City Attorney and Chief Administrative Officer under Ray Nagin. Probably Rice's most famous exploit from that time was his purchase of the supposedly "bomb-proof" trash cans. In this story, we see Nagin trying to distance himself from the controversy.
In a recent interview, Nagin said he was never a fan of the squatty cans, bought with a no-bid contract at the direction of former Chief Administrative Officer Charles Rice. Rice left city government in 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina.
"Those little munchkin trash cans? We got rid of those," Nagin said, referring to the trash can deal as "a Charles Rice special."
The mayor's chief beef, apparently, was that the receptacles, known as "Jazzy Cans," were too small.
"I said to Charles, 'Where'd you find these trash cans?'¤" Nagin recounted. "They're about this tall," he added, holding his hand at the level of a table top. "I had to bend over to put stuff in ¤'em."
Told of the mayor's comments, Rice fired back.
"This was discussed with Ray Nagin one-on-one and in a staff meeting in his office," said Rice, who is practicing law. "Ultimately, any decision involving the city of New Orleans rests with the mayor. He approved the purchase of the trash cans, and at the end of the day, Ray Nagin makes the decision and bears the ultimate responsibility."
The trash cans were controversial when they were installed, though the controversy had nothing to do with their size. The problem was that the company that supplied them, Niche Marketing USA, acknowledged a business relationship with Terrence Rice, Charles Rice's brother -- though the Rices have denied the link.
While Charles Rice is no longer the CEO at Entergy, he is still there in the legal department. His wife also works for Entergy as a systems analyst while maintaining a quasi public service role as chair of the public library board.
When Ken Polite left the US Attorney's office for Louisiana's Eastern District, he was briefly rumored to become a mayoral candidate. Instead he landed at Entergy. Here was his job description.
Entergy, based in New Orleans, confirmed the hire in a statement Tuesday (April 18), adding Polite will serve as the company's chief compliance officer overseeing legal and regulatory matters, including its compliance with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules. Polite, 41, joined the company Tuesday and will assume full leadership of the department over the summer.
In the statement, Marcus Brown, executive vice president and general counsel at Entergy Corp., praised Polite's "superior legal acumen, experience leading people and his personal commitment to local communities."
"He is well suited to upholding and enhancing Entergy's high standards for ethical behavior and our serious commitment to complying with laws and regulations -- and doing what's right even when there's no rule to follow," Brown said.
Having received ethical instruction from Polite, Entergy would go on to unnecessarily shut down power during a severe freeze in New Orleans, struggle with restoring power and being transparent with the public after Hurricane Ida, back out of its commitment to funding a new substation for Sewerage and Water Board, and, of course, continue inventing new ways to nickel and dime its ratepayers.
Of course, Polite would also remain closely involved in government. In 2020 his firm was hired (secretly and outside of regular procurement procedures) by the city to perform one of the several simultaneous and conflicting investigations into causes of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse. Last year, President Biden appointed Polite to head the US Justice Department's Criminal Division where he will be in charge of investigating, among many other things, public corruption.
And then there are the firms the city council is (supposedly) attempting to replace through this bidding process. Here is a Lens feature from a couple years ago on the Dentons lawfirm and Legend Consulting Group. The story provides one of the best looks at the interlocking relationships between the City Council, the consulting firms, and Entergy itself. There's so much going on there, it wouldn't do the article justice to just quote a few paragraphs. But here are a few paragraphs.
It’s neither illegal nor uncommon in Louisiana for government contractors to make campaign contributions to the politicians that hire them. And prior to the April 2007 resolution, members of the utility committee received a steady stream of campaign contributions from utility advisors, adding up to tens of thousands of dollars. Even after 2007, several council members received campaign contributions from utility consultants.
Thomas’ campaign finance records from his time on the council show thousands of dollars in contributions from several utility advisers, dating from at least 2002 to early 2007. The Lens identified one small contribution of $250 to Head from Bruno and Tervalon — the utility committee’s accounting contractor — in 2015. We could not identify any such contributions to Midura, who said in 2007 that she did not accept campaign money from contractors involved in regulating Entergy, according to an article in The Times-Picayune.
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.”
There also appears to be a longtime relationship between the utility consultants and the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), a local political organization based in Central City. That relationship can be traced back at least to 1987, when the council hired a firm run by Sidney Cates IV and then-Tax Assessor Kenneth Carter. Carter, a co-founder of BOLD and the father of Karen Carter Peterson, was a close friend of then-Councilman Jim Singleton, another BOLD co-founder.
Long story short, the very small circle of people in the New Orleans political elite class (and we are talking multiple generations of the same families) tend to ping pong in and out of government as they take lucrative jobs with the contractors those offices hire and the utilities and businesses they regulate. One more classic example of this occurred in January when we learned that Judge Regina Bartholomew-Woods, who is married to Jimmie Woods, the owner of one of the city's two major trash hauling contractors, was resigning her judgeship so she could take a position with, yep, Entergy.
All of which is to say, it's little wonder an unusually combative City Council can find any takers for these consulting contracts that may already be tacitly spoken for. And that's a shame because JP makes it sound like they are so very close to getting to the bottom of this animal conspiracy. But it's tough when you can't get anyone to take the case. Nobody wants to work in this town anymore, it seems. That is unless they're working for Entergy.
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