Susan Hutson will have plenty time to get more buy-in (or buy more people off) later

Susan Hutson's float (seen from way across the street because I had COVID) rolls down St. Charles Avenue in the Legion of Mars parade in February 

New Orleans's fav reformist Sheriff has not had a great time of things since her glorious elevation to that office. Maybe she just hasn't figured out how all the knobs and buttons work on the jail machine yet. Or maybe that whole notion about being able to steer the prison industrial industrial complex in wise directions from the inside needs to be rethought. Of course, Hutson would tell you, it just needs more money.

Sheriff Susan Hutson has quietly placed a question on this ballot that would expand OPSO's current property tax millage from 2.8 mils to 5.5 for the next ten years boosting her annual budget by about $13 million. Hutson hasn't offered a detailed description of her plans for the funding increase. She has called it a "compliance millage" which would imply that it is meant to help bring the jail into compliance with the dictates of federal oversight. But most of the money seems designated for staff raises and an, as yet, incomplete list of building improvements. As is often the case with the infamously opaque and unaccountable Sheriff's department, voters are just expected to trust whoever holds the office. In that regard, Hutson hasn't exactly inspired confidence.

There are three things that this Saturday's ballot measure would do and all of them are bad. 1) It will double the funding available to one of the most corrupt and unaccountable patronage wells in the city. 2) It will double the funding available to a jail that should by rights be emptied and closed.  3) It will also raise taxes on homeowners already getting nailed with rising insurance premiums. Landlords will inevitably pass these costs on to renters.  And of course the revenue generated creates no social benefit.

The thing is, it's not likely to pass. Not this time, anyway.  Every organization that regularly weighs in on such matters has come out against it. All of them have, in various ways, criticized the proposed millage because Hutson has no concrete plan for how it is to be spent. Which raises questions given how she spends money now. For example, DSA (one of the many orgs in opposition who I happen to be quoting here) points to this.

During this past Carnival season, Hutson's office was charged with coordinating the city's last minute mad scramble to staff parade routes with supplemental police and sheriff's deputies from around the state.  Law enforcement agencies have made it an annual routine to hold Mardi Gras hostage in order to shake down the city for money. This act has only grown more farcical in recent years and, this year, Hutson's participation has drawn particular scrutiny. According to reports, the Sheriff booked 13 or 15 hotel rooms for what looks like as many as 11 days and nights during the Carnival season, ostensibly for her staff and deputies. No audit can show exactly who used the rooms, though. After the story became a public controversy, Hutson announced the $18,000 hotel bill would be covered through private donations. This only raises further ethical questions, however. So does an expenditure of over $15,000 on a "conflict coaching" consultant to deal with the understandable push back from dissenting advisors among her staff. That money was poorly spent also. Hutson went ahead and fired four of her top staff anyway. At least one of them is considering filing for whistleblower status.

But after this proposal fails, it will be interesting to see what happens next.  The Sheriff's current millage doesn't actually expire until next year. So this is more of a trial balloon than a make or break gambit. I think the other reason it's on the ballot now is City Council already denied Hutson's request for the same amount of money last November so this would have been one way to work around that. In any case, it's just as likely we'll see a similar proposal appear on a future ballot.  The difference to watch out for then will be to see who, among the current coaliton of dissenters, will have been bought off ... er.. brought on board by then.

Surely, a winning slogan

Put it on a dang billboard

.@jefflandry says his vision is to make Louisiana more like Mississippi. #lagov

— Jan Moller (@jmollerLBP) April 26, 2023

Sounds like Fouad refused to rat on his friends

 He's a real one. We knew that.

Zeton has close connections to a number of local politicians, including Mayor LaToya Cantrell and several local judges. As a result, his indictment in December -- more than a year after federal agents raided the Magnolia Mansion, an event space he owned -- set off speculation that the case might mushroom into something more substantial.

Zeton himself encouraged the talk. He told a reporter last year that he was collateral damage in prosecutors' quest to reel in a bigger fish.

“I have no idea who is the big fish, but I’m not the one,” he said, adding: “This has nothing to do with artwork.”

Zeton said last year that the FBI had asked him questions about about his relationships with various political figures. But he also claimed he had little to tell them.

Indeed, the court documents released Wednesday do not say anything about Zeton's political connections.

 Instead he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Could get five years for that, potentially. Probably won't. In any case, on the other end of this a lot of important people will be grateful.

Congratulations, Mayor Oliver Thomas

I can't pay attention the Trump indictment. It just seems like so much boring celebrity gossip to me. Anyway, I missed this one a few days ago.  

In Louisiana, the flamboyant former Gov. Edwin Edwards, who spent eight years in prison on corruption charges, tried, and failed, to mount a political comeback with a run for Congress in 2014.

Voters in New Orleans were more forgiving of the City Council member Oliver Thomas, who was imprisoned after pleading guilty in 2007 to taking bribes, but was returned to the Council in 2021. Mr. Thomas spent years trying to come to grips with his transgressions both privately and publicly; at one point he even played himself in a theatrical production based on his downfall.

Clancy DuBos, a New Orleans political analyst, said that Mr. Thomas earned back voters’ trust by facing up to his guilt, and then engaging in extensive volunteer and community service work. “He’s seen as someone who’s fallen but he’s done a complete arc of redemption,” said Mr. DuBos. He thinks Mr. Thomas could one day be mayor.

It's always dangerous territory to find oneself in agreement with Clancy DuBos. But there is context.  This article had to be pointed out to me last night because I compared OT, not to Trump the way this story does, but to Paul Vallas who we all just watched lose the Chicago mayoral runoff.  This was a surprising development to me for a whole host of reasons. Chief among them being that the kind of Vallas coalition described by Chicago tweeters (privatizing NGOs, vestigial political machines, cops and real estate moguls stoking crime panic) is insurmountably dominant in New Orleans.

He already sucked as a centrist neo-liberal privatization fossil from 20 years ago, and then he went MAGA radio host as a hobby. Built a coalition of remnant Daley machine grifters, deluded billionaires, online reactionaries, and the police. Just an absolute demon of a candidate.

— Metra Eccentric (@MetraEccentric) April 5, 2023

All of that describes a figure like Oliver Thomas. He even has his own radio show! 

So, yeah, I agree with Clancy. If you're looking to place an early bet on #NOLAMayor 2025, OT is a good spot to lay some money. (Also pretty good spot to lay money if you're looking for a favorable parking contract but we knew that already.)  But the reason isn't because New Orleans voters are "more forgiving" so much as there just isn't any alternative for them to believe in here.

Island hopping

The insidious thing about charterization is that it not only destroyed the union but it also set workers on a long struggle to claw it back independent school by independent school.  Nearly twenty years have passed and so far they've won 6 out of 71 schools back. 

Living School joins Rooted School, International High School, Bricolage Academy, Morris Jeff Community School and Ben Franklin High School as organized collective bargaining units. Teachers in New Orleans who do not work at a unionized school can join United Teachers of New Orleans.

A small percentage of New Orleans' 71 charter schools are unionized. After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of public school teachers were fired and schools were taken over by the Recovery School District or transformed into charters, ending the contract between the city and the union.

And, of course, in the meantime, there have been thousands of lives uprooted and communities destroyed by the charter project that will never come back. Also one of the primary villains in this plot is about to be elected mayor of Chicago today.  

When Vallas went to New Orleans in 2007, the city was still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which had made landfall two years earlier. In 2003, a Democrat-controlled Louisiana legislature had taken control of schools across the state by establishing the Recovery School District (RSD), which took over “underperforming” schools, the majority of which were initially in New Orleans.

The RSD fired the district’s teachers, who were unionized and mostly Black, middle-aged professionals, and replaced them with younger, whiter, out-of-town TFA recruits. Dix Moore-Broussard, a longtime arts teacher in New Orleans, told the TRiiBE that after Katrina, the district laid everyone off. (In 2010 Duncan, who was then secretary of education, said Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”)

“We got notice that they weren’t opening the schools and we could go pick up our last check,” she said. “Everybody just got $2,000, and it was the most insulting thing ever.”

But hey 6 of the 71 privatized schools now have their own little unions. Celebrate the little victories, I guess, but there's no justice here.