"Qualified"

I wonder what what Pierre Villere is getting at here, specifically.  

A dozen of Moreno’s donors have contributed $12,000, the maximum allowed by state law. They include a mix of local donors and out-of-state donors, among them Zelia LLC, which is affiliated with Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson, and Houston-based FMJR Management LLC. 

Three of Moreno's maximum donations came from financial consultant Pierre Villere, his children or corporate entities affiliated with the family. Villere described Moreno as a longtime friend and said she "is, without a doubt, the most qualified candidate we've had for mayor since Moon Landrieu."

"I moved to Mandeville 32 years ago because I got completely fed up with the crime and the potholes. And 32 years later, nothing has happened," said Villere, who consults for the construction industry. "It's hugely, hugely frustrating to see the lack of progress." 

You know the mayors who came after Moon and didn't happen to be Moon's son all had a particular thing in common. Maybe that's what this guy who has lived on the northshore for three decades is talking about with regard to "qualifications." It's hard to say. 

Ban Mayors 2025: Chapter 1 Midsummer

I thought I had this city figured out.  In New Orleans, or at least in the New Orleans I grew up in, when you tell people an event scheduled in the middle of summer on a weeknight begins at 6:30, surely you don't mean for them to show up before 7.  Maybe that's different now.  I don't know.  Anyway, I certainly wasn't the only person who calculated incorrectly the best time to arrive for VOTE's mayoral forum a couple Thursdays ago. By the time I got there, a sizeable crowd of my fellow stragglers had already been locked out of the over-capacity event. 

It's a shame too. People really seemed to be looking forward to this. I swear I saw couples on dates waiting outside. Or at least a lot of people were overdressed.  Mid-summer isn't exactly high social season around here. School is out. The Saints don't kick off for a few months. The Pelicans have been done for a while. It's too hot to spend much time outside. At the time of the forum, Essence Fest was still a few weeks away (and now that it's here, has turned out to be something of a dud anyway.) Politics is basically the only game in town right now.  And a good number of us couldn't get a ticket. 

That wasn't really anybody's fault. VOTE headquarters isn't a large space. They did the best they could. But maybe the next mayoral forum can book the Smoothie King Center.  One man who didn't make it in was giving the volunteers at the door a hard time about all of this. There was no need, though, as we were assured the event would be live streamed on Instagram and then made available later. "But the video will be biased!" the man shouted. In favor of who or what, he didn't say. Or, at least, I didn't wait around to find out. I hurried off to find somewhere air conditioned where I could watch on a screen.  What follows is a brief summary of the event (accounting, of course, for whatever unseen "bias" the video may be harboring.)  

In the above screen grab from Instagram, we see seated on our left, former criminal court judge Arthur Hunter. Judge Hunter isn't really seen as a major contender in this election. But he is a respected figure in political circles and we can consider him a serious candidate. Or at least, he's not a crackpot. He does have a history of ducking in or out of municipal campaigns serving as either a stalking horse or strategic spoiler, although it's not explicitly clear to what purpose.  On the right, is Once and Current Councilman Oliver Thomas famous for, among other things, his gig as a local talk radio host, some dabbling with acting in community theater, and that one time he pleaded guilty to charges of accepting bribes in exchange for fixing city parking lot contracts.  In the middle, dressed as an orange traffic cone, perhaps to emphasize her concern with fixing the city streets, is current Councilperson At-Large Helena Moreno.  

Moreno and Thomas were especially energetic in their delivery at this event.  It's opening night of a high stakes campaign and, obviously they wanted to set a dramatic tone. The actual rhetoric could use a little refinement. I'm already tired of hearing Moreno talk about "outside the box solutions." Hunter answered nearly every question by saying he is all about "doing the work and bringing people to the table." So it's a little discouraging to see we haven't updated our go-to cliches since 1996 or so. Also everyone thinks they've hit on a winner with variations on "govern like it's the Superbowl every day."  I understand why they think that. But until I hear any of them actually push back against the way corporate mega-events like this year's Superbowl exploit the city and its people, all of that posturing rings hollow. 

The night's format consisted of questions prepared by VOTE and some submitted ahead of time by audience members and partnering organizations. I'll try to organize candidate responses around general topics covered in the questions.  

Housing: Moreno talked a little bit about city owned properties. For decades, the city has struggled.. or neglected.. to make productive use of the large number of vacant buildings it owns or properties controlled by quasi-governmental agencies. I believe I heard Moreno actually use the term "public housing" while referencing such properties. Normally you hear politicians stop at the more vague phrase "back into commerce."  So that's something to keep an eye on. Thomas said he wants to meet with realtors and owners of home construction firms to see what these "experts" have to say about the problem; a decidedly more conservative, or what the punditry typically terms "business friendly" approach. 

Homelessness:  All three candidates shifted the focus to supportive services for people dealing with mental illness.  That's a laudable point of emphasis in a vacuum, but in this context it is more of a dodge.  It's true that many people suffering from homelessness also need mental health care. But politicians tend to marry the two issues in a way that implies mental illness is the cause of homelessness in general. And that simply is not the case.  Too often, focusing the discussion here is a way to pretend a problem isn't really a problem. 

Short Term Rentals: Here we got a perfect encapsulation of the problem with this issue from the beginning: Strong rhetoric from elected representatives that in no way matches their actions or intentions in reality.  "The real issue is out of town corporations buying up tons of homes and pushing people out," Moreno complained. "STRs are pushing people out of their neighborhoods. It's not morally correct," said Thomas. That's all fine and true.  But those of us who have been watching city councilmembers get performatively mad at while actively enabling this problem for over a decade are going to need to see solid action before getting too excited. Thomas finished his answer by basically passing the buck on up to the state legislature.  Also this week we learned that both councilmembers voted to approve an exception to the temporary commercial STR ban which allowed the owners of a building at 1201 Canal Street to begin evicting tenants in order to convert their homes into new Airbnbs. 

Criminal Justice and policing: All of the candidates spoke favorably of care economy interventions like universal Pre-K although Moreno added that day care facilities funded by a recently dedicated property tax millage "aren't being built fast enough."  Hunter boasted that as a judge he took charge of standing up "re-entry courts" to smooth the transition of incarcerated people back to civilian life. Moreno was quick to claim credit for the legislation creating these courts. Thomas tried to make a point about the economic impact of "lost production" from people excluded by incarceration histories. He has a valid point but there's something dehumanizing about conceiving of people in terms of their potential labor input. 

Oliver Thomas is currently pushing an ordinance that would expand NOPD's use of invasive surveillance technology such as facial recognition cameras and gunshot detection microphones.  The Washington Post recently reported that New Orleans police were already violating local laws banning them from using these tools and are, in fact, creating the most expansive surveillance dragnet in the US right now. This is most acutely concerning as the newly passed Republican budget greatly expands ICE's reach into cities like New Orleans where information gathered by surveillance tech will no doubt lead to more outrageous abductions of local residents like that of this 64 year old Iranian immigrant arrested at her home in Lakeview last month. 

It was in this context that we heard the most shocking comment of the evening from Thomas. When the candidates were asked how they would protect immigrant communities from ICE, Thomas bluntly stated, "illegal aliens who are criminal don't need to be here." Although he did express a desire to find "a humane way" to do deportations. So, good looking out, there.  

Infrastructure: Already mentioned this but I think it was Helena Moreno who first brought up the "Superbowl every day" bit with regard to street repairs. Later there was a question framed around that premise. But there are some problems with this slogan. It references a situation created by the Governor last year when he appointed business lobbyist Michael Hecht to lead a task force focused on making the city look nice for visiting media and corporate guests of the NFL coming into town for the Big Game. Hecht was given charge of some state funds but mostly just money out of the municipal budget to prioritize repairs to roads, lights and other things likely to catch the eyes of visitors in early February. But handing extraordinary power over to an unelected lobbyist to contract out tourist-facing rush jobs such as, in some cases, literally concealing blighted office towers behind wrap-around advertisements is a dubious model for our mayoral candidates to hold up as aspirational.   What Moreno (and Thomas who echoed these sentiments) should say is that they want quality, reliable infrastructure that works for every resident all the time.  It seemed like they wanted to make this point. But I'm not sure they've fully examined the full implication of the Superbowl example. 

Some other infrastructure points:  

Thomas, still on the equity kick, had a line about "fixing the streets in the 9th ward the same way they do in the Garden District."  I wonder if he's actually driven through the Garden District recently. Most of the streets there stay pockmarked. They're so bad, in fact, that I often wonder if the neighborhood wants it that way just to slow the traffic.  

Hunter mentioned "merging" the Sewerage and Water Board with the city Public Works Department. That would entail such a massive political and bureaucratic reorganization, though, that one has to wonder if he knows what he is saying.  On the other hand, I think Jacques Morial is an advisor to Hunter sometimes. So, maybe he does know. 

Moreno complained about the city's chronic problems paying its vendors on time, which, yep, good point. On the other hand, she says the problem here is "leadership," which... eh.. yawn.  

Odds and ends:  

The candidates were also asked about the funding the Public Defender's office, which they all support, about the state of the public schools, about which they all had decent but unremarkable points, and about the UMC nurses' labor dispute. All of the candidates claim to have pro-labor bonafides but didn't break any news with regard to the nurses' situation.  They were also asked to comment on the ongoing genocide in Gaza; a question which they all deflected via one or another version of "There needs to be ceasefire but I'm concerned about ceasefire in the streets of New Orleans..." to paraphrase both Moreno and Thomas's comments. The candidates may not want to grapple with this. But there are ways in which the mayor of a city like New Orleans can and does interface with the war crimes committed by the US military and its allies. So, like it or not, these candidates have a responsibility to think about that. Perhaps someone will ask the question in a way that is less easily brushed off. 

Speaking of brushing things off, the "lightning round" portion of the evening brought us the Yes/No question: "Do you support outright public ownership of public utilities?"  The room went silent for a good thirty seconds while Helena Moreno, gears visibly turning in her head, thought about this one.  Finally, the answer she came up with was, "Yes and no."  

Oof.

Of course, these three aren't the only candidates participating in this year's sweepstakes. The forum was well ahead of the qualifying period which actually begins this coming Wednesday.  According to VOTE, at the time, these were the only three candidates to file campaign finance reports which is why they were invited to appear on stage. 

Lingering around outside I noticed signage on the neutral ground planted by some of the more niche candidates some of whom were giving interviews outside. I thought this bit from James Finn's T-P write up captured the image well. 

Still, a handful of fringe candidates are mounting campaigns, several of whom arrived at Thursday's debate after protesting having been excluded from the event. Counselor Ricky Twiggs, a political independent, and businessperson Renada Collins shook hands with audience members before the forum began. Former 911 call center operator Tyrell Morris tried to enter the event but was turned away after the space reached capacity. He peered in through the space's sliding glass doors as the event got underway.

Finally we should note all of this took place a week before another big name candidate shook up the entire field with this announcement.  

Business owner Frank Scurlock announced his run for New Orleans mayor on Thursday, saying that if elected, he would ensure a safe, business-friendly city. 

Scurlock is running as an independent and his campaign is self-financed, according to a press release issued Thursday and his campaign website. Scurlock, who is known for his family's inflatable party attractions business and his attempt to acquire the former Six Flags site, ran for mayor in 2017 and for governor in 2023. 

Also, Royce Duplessis is running. He says he has to for some reason. 

“Six months ago, I made the very difficult decision not to run for mayor,” Duplessis said in a post on Instagram Sunday evening. “But after continuing to listen to the people of this city, your frustrations, your disappointments, your confusion, and most of all your lack of faith in the future, it became painfully clear that I have to run.”

It's painful for him to have to do this. Sounds like somebody's been twisting some arms. Who, though? and why?  During a sweaty kick-off speech to a packed house at the Ashe center, Royce wasn't long on specifics but he did emphasize three points: 1) Port expansion. This is a major priority for state and local business leaders struggling with neighborhood opposition in St. Bernard Parish, Trump tariff chaos internationally, and competition from modernized facilities in Mobile and in Houston. 2) Support for service industry workers. There was some implication that this would be a priority within the city budget somehow, but nothing specific. 3) "Build 40,000 new housing units." Again, not much information as to who will be building them or for whom or how. Rhetorically, the thrust of his speech was basically, "we wouldn't have so many problems if it weren't for all these dang politics." Which is a weird thing for a politician to say on the day he is getting into a political race. Especially one he says he didn't want to run in. 

Which brings us back to the question of why is Royce running? We'll learn more about that as the campaign goes on and we find out which funders and powerbrokers line up in his corner. But we can see why he might be an appealing option to some still looking in from the outside.  At the outset, I think the rhetoric about "putting politics aside" might be the key to understanding that. Royce could offer a viable third lane in what had been shaping up as a field polarized, not only by race, but by matters of professionalism vs. patronage, transplants vs. locals, etc. Familiar dynamics that map out in a way Royce can kind of float above, or at least appear to. 

Allies of Governor Landry seeking an entry point to "bring the city to heel," might take advantage of that.  Royce is seen as a vocal opponent of the Governor in Baton Rouge. But he's often been receptive to Landry's designs on reforming local governance; putting more decision making power in the hands of state controlled boards rather than locally responsive entities, that sort of thing. Let's watch and see what he has to say about Sewerage and Water Board reform the next time that comes up.  Royce has also been a friend to big business and real estate money in New Orleans. One example we've already mentioned is the port expansion plank he launched his campaign with last week. Another example, he was instrumental in getting tax breaks authorized for the controversial (possibly imperiled?)  "River District" development. 

On the more Democratic side of things, Royce has had alliances with the Ike Spears-Cedric Richmond-Troy Carter... um... what is the term for this? It's not a "machine" really. More of a gravitational center - a blob, maybe(?) of patronage fed by bail bonds and oil and gas money along with some other unsavory interests.  Anyway, it makes up a key part of the Democratic Party establishment (such as it is) in Louisiana.  Likely this support would have ended up with Moreno. Now it may be back up for grabs.  If it shifts to Duplessis, that may also signal to conservative crime panic reactionaries who aren't thrilled that their closest ideological ally in the race, Oliver Thomas, is an admitted felon, that Royce might be someone they can compromise with. 

Anyway, it's subtle but we can see how Duplessis's candidacy might appeal to both liberal and conservative establishment donor bases. It's only been a week but it's tempting to call him the front runner already.  But let's wait and see where the money goes from here.  As of a week ago, Moreno still had a commanding lead there.   We still have a long hot summer ahead of us. 

The metastasizing revenue error

Lost in all the back and forth negotiations and legal maneuvering  between the New Orleans Public School District and the City over finances, no one has yet adequately explained the "accounting error" that led to the schools' budget deficit in the first place. Now it turns out that the errors are not necessarily limited to NOPS only.

This story says the city may have overestimated revenue projections for this year by some $18 million. 

New Orleans officials overestimated 2024 property tax collections by $18 million, further complicating what has become a fraught year for city budgeting. 

The revelation came during the quarterly Revenue Estimating Conference, when the city’s chief economist, Matthew Cooper, said he misjudged how much of the city's assessed property taxes would actually be paid.

The error could have implications for other taxing bodies that rely on City Hall revenue estimates. The Orleans Parish School Board last year discovered a $50 million deficit, which school officials have partially blamed on bad revenue forecasting by the city.

City finances are incredibly complicated and the shortfall could be the result of multiple types of errors and shenanigans. The article emphasizes the lag effect from appeals after a reassessment year for one rather benign example. But note also, in this passage, the effect of a rapidly sickening economy.

But the overall property tax compliance rate is a combination of both real estate and business inventory taxes, and inventory compliance sagged to 78%. Inventory taxes are assessed every year, but Cooper said he didn’t know if the 2024 compliance rate is typical. He attributed it to businesses that closed and didn’t pay inventory taxes, but didn’t say if that occurred more frequently last year than other years.

“They don't want to pay their inventory if they’re out of business. They can't pay their bills in the first place,” Cooper said in a brief interview.

I'm sure the next mayor and council will figure a way out of it though.  Probably the plan will involve bigger and better tax breaks for hotel developers. 

NEW ORLEANS - After months of work with numerous stakeholders, Council Vice President Helena Moreno is introducing a proposal to create clear and concise regulations for developers to receive a Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA). For far too long, existing guidelines have been confusing to applicants, appeared inconsistent, and contained some outdated policies that do not support good development projects, nor do they ensure accountability on behalf of RTA recipients. Plus, approvals for RTAs appeared to be subjective. Moreno now wants to ensure that the determination is based on meeting criteria along with providing clarity and accountability to the program.

The Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA) Program provided by state law allows the City Council the ability to approve a tax abatement for commercial property owners and homeowners who expand, restore, improve, or develop an existing structure in a downtown development district, opportunity zone, economic development district, or historic district. If approved, the owner has the right to pay ad valorem taxes based on the assessed valuation of the property for the year prior to the commencement of the project for five years after completion of the work. 

Somebody should really do something

Does Troy Carter know what that is?  Doesn't seem like it. 

Attendees told Carter that they felt helpless, confused and worried about the federal government’s actions. In response, Carter told the concerned residents to take to social media and to call elected officials in Louisiana and other states to express their dissatisfaction with Democratic leaders in Congress.

One attendee, Andrew Cosgrove, asked Carter how to increase political engagement among residents. Carter’s response — encouraging voting and organizing among church groups and on social media — did little to satisfy Cosgrove or other attendees who spoke with Verite News.  

“It seemed like he had no plan and no answers,” Cosgrove told Verite News after the town hall. “He’s saying, ‘Make sure you vote next time,’ but he’s talking to a room of folks who voted and then took time out of their night to go to a town hall meeting, so that didn’t make any sense to me.”

You see, Troy is simply the elected representative to the US Congress.  He's not really there to do anything difficult.  It falls to you, then, to exercise your much greater power to... vote sometimes and also do posts.  Whatever you do, don't yell at him about it.  Remember, he just wants all this stuff off of his desk. 

This might be interesting if it wasn't so predictable. I think I'm just getting old now but I do get tired of watching a cycle stuck on repeat. I used to wonder if the latest turn of the ratchet would be the one the finally breaks it. But I don't know if I still think that can ever really happen. The Democrats, in the main, seem ready to make their same familiar move: not so much opposing the radical right as figuring out how to benefit from its ascendance.

Here is a recent interview with Minnesota Governor (and 2024 VP candidate) Tim Walz where he looks forward to Trump's unilateral and illegal shuttering of federal agencies as a new "opportunity."

How much can Democrats can rebuild, of what Trump is un-building right now? We’ve seen cases where employees are laid off, a court orders them back, but they’re still laid off. Do Democrats run in 2028 on re-establishing it?

I use the analogy of the car running out of gas. Car runs out of gas, you go get a can, you pour some in, you start it up, and it’s all fine. This is the car running out of oil, and it’s broken. And what I’m saying is, he is breaking it. This is a little bit in the Ezra Klein space: Democrats need to acknowledge that not all these agencies work perfectly. All of us who teach would agree to that. You know, we say how important the Department of Education is, how it does incredible work, but we would all argue there’s ways they could be better.

I think we need to start messaging right now. We need to put our experts on this. How will we build back next time? I think it’s an opportunity. I think it’s an opportunity to create the agencies the way we saw them in the first place, functioning better, without all the barnacles. So, Trump might be doing us a favor. He stripped it down, he blew the motor up. We’re going to put a new motor in it and take off. And I think that’s how we have to start thinking about it.

He's just articulating the thing we've known for a while. Democrats actually agree with Republican austerity policy. They, too, want to dismantle what's left of the welfare state. But they don't want to be the party seen as responsible for that happening. And, of course, they want to make sure they're in position to grab whatever coins they can that spill from the smashed pinata. 

None of this is new. It's just worse now than ever because, well, that's what happens when rot runs unchecked for so long. What is DOGE, after all, besides just the latest and most extreme form of neoliberalism. 

One important reason for the trend toward privatization is the long-standing, bipartisan belief in Washington that private-sector contractors are inherently more efficient than government employees. The Reagan administration embraced contracting with open arms, despite early warning signs, and eventually initiated a formal commission on privatization. This was followed up by the “National Partnership for Reinventing Government,” through which President Bill Clinton promised that he would “make our Government work better” with the help of the business world. This private-sector fetish remains strong within the Trump administration, which has encouraged government workers “to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

Despite how widespread this perception of contractor efficiency is among policymakers, there has never been much strong evidence for it. In 1994, a Defense Department inspector general report noted that “Federal agencies often contract for services at a cost that is 25 percent to 40 percent greater than if Federal employees had been used to perform the services.” A 2011 report by the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight found that private contractors are often greatly overpaid in comparison to government workers. And in the situations where waste and abuse is identified in government programs, for-profit contractors are often the culprits.

We've been on this long path to destruction for a generation or so.  Politicians at every level of government and in both parties have specialized in smash and grab for longer than most of us have been eligible to vote for or against any of them.  Why are things so shitty? Because the entire era in which we've been alive has been about making things shittier and shittier for the sake of concentrating wealth in fewer hands. The thing that has been happening is still happening. It's happening in your city on a routine basis. 

Under the auspices of his charitable group, the Wisdom Foundation, and a newly created for-profit company called Civilized.ai, Wisdom and his team had been working for months with the city to integrate “newer technologies” with the city’s infrastructure. To do that, he planned to work with the city’s existing database of 311 requests. 

In late 2023, he rolled out FixNOLA, a website that catalogues and gamifies the city’s 311 data regarding road and drainage issues, creating a leaderboard to keep track of top “fixers,” a mix of contractors and volunteers who provide photographs and updates to existing 311 requests. Then, in February of this year, Wisdom launched ChatNOLA, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that can help log 311 requests as well as provide updates on already submitted requests while communicating in a human-like manner.

Behind the scenes, Wisdom and his nonprofit have rankled some city staffers, who noted that Wisdom is doing this work without a formal agreement with the city government. They are also concerned about whether Wisdom’s team is getting access to the personal information, such as phone numbers and home addresses, that residents enter into the city’s 311 system when they make a complaint. 

Five city employees familiar with 311 systems and protocols told Verite News that they are concerned that Wisdom, who has no background in public service administration, is creating a parallel 311 system when the city is in the process of implementing an already purchased new system for processing 311 data. (The employees declined to be identified publicly for fear of retaliation.)

The city already publishes 311 complaints on a public-facing database. But it scrubs the data of personal information, such as the complainants’ names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Neither the Wisdom Foundation nor Civilized.ai has any contract or agreement with the city outlining the terms of this work or setting limits on how it can use the personal data it collects.

You can see the continuance of this in evidence as the field of candidates for this year's municipal elections begins to take shape.  A group of donors, politicos, and other local heavy hitters is hoping to influence the campaign by publishing its own Project 2025 document of sorts.

The recommendations from the City Services Coalition, which was formed in 2024 by real estate developer Pres Kabacoff, attorney David Marcello and others, focus on streamlining the structure and management of city government.

They include a proposed overhaul of the Sewerage & Water Board, empowering the mayor’s top deputy to manage day-to-day city operations, reforming the civil service system and clarifying the role of the city attorney.

The effort comes seven months before voters head to the polls to decide who will represent them on the City Council and who will succeed Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who is term-limited and unable to seek re-election. 

The coalition, which released the 216-page policy manual during a news conference Monday afternoon, has already met with announced and prospective mayoral candidates, including Helena Moreno, Arthur Hunter and Oliver Thomas.

Basically what's going on among the local politicians, donors and consulting pros is they're all trying to maximize their potential for getting a piece of whatever new patronage conduits are created after the next round of privatization.  With all the vandalism going on at the national and state levels, locally we have opportunists not pushing back against any of that but rather positioning themselves to catch as much as they can of the money that gets shaken loose. Somebody should really do something about all of this, you say?  Well, that's what your favs are doing. The same thing they always do. 

"Major entertainment district"

This is kind of a story about the mayor's objections to a recently passed concealed carry law.  But the part that draws our interest is where we learn that Alonzo Knox might have a solution. 

City leaders said they hope that after  Gov. Landry signs the bill, legislators will at least agree to exempt the entertainment district of New Orleans. 

Councilwoman Helena Moreno said she believes a proposed house bill might offer some pushback against permit-less concealed carry. According to Moreno, State Rep. Alonzo Knox, whose district includes The French Quarter, plans to author a bill to limit the crime session law's application to his district. 

"It's a carveout of what we are calling a major entertainment district, these are the areas which have the largest crowds," Moreno said. "What the legislation does, is it puts it under a firearm-free zone, so in public places there would not be firearms allowed."

Moreno said she has spoken to Republican legislators privately, who said they would support the bill. 

Something tells me an "entertainment district" bill by Alonzo Knox is likely to be more about heightening surveillance, cracking down on street vendors and removing homeless people from sight during the Superbowl next year and that the guns bit is just a coincidental add on.  Anyway, watch this space, I guess.

Actually, instead of being lazy, I looked up the bill. On its face, it just defines a new term, "major entertainment district" in order to create a zone where firearms are prohibited.

A major entertainment district" means the public spaces within an area that traditionally hosts more than fifteen million people annually, contains a venue for sports and entertainment with a capacity for more than seventy-five thousand people, a convention center with more than one million square feet of exhibition space, and has one land-based casino. 

This shall include the area of the city of New Orleans containing the boundaries of the French Quarter as provided in R.S. 25:799(B), the Downtown Development District as provided in R.S. 33:2740.3(A), and the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as provided in R.S 33:130.862(A).

Conveniently, of course, this creates a new stop-and-frisk zone for Jeff Landry's "Troop NOLA."  There are other issues as well with designating a larger part of downtown under a term that implies its primary function is to entertain tourists.

Keep Doing What You're Doing

This is not just Dennis Allen's motto, or even Gayle Benson's apparent marching orders to her coach this offseason.  It's also a favorite creed of city governance. We can change the elected mayors and councilmembers around as many times as we like. We can vote them out of office, put them in jail, threaten to recall them, and we've tried all of these. But as long as there is no popular political movement animating any of this turnover, then, in the words of Joe Biden, nothing will fundamentally change about how the actual business is done. 

For most of the last year, through the exercise of a fraudulent recall movement, among other things, the ruling elite of the city have been playing a game we might call, "This here mayor we created and elected is bad now. Very much unlike the next mayor we will create and elect on very much the same platform."  Something similar happens to all of our second term mayors, lately. It's a kind of blood ritual where our entrenched powers purge themselves of responsibility for the last demon they summoned so that they may move on and call upon the next one. 

Last week, we pointed out the example of Forward Together New Orleans. This is the non-profit created by current sacrificial goat, LaToya Cantrell in order to administer the very large privatized section of city expenditures off budget and as far away from the scrutiny of governmental transparency, accountability or civil service rules as possible.  There was a time when that was the new vehicle created so that a new mayor could pretend to do things differently from the previous one. But now that mayor is being exorcised so we have to pretend something different will replace that too. 

What's replacing it, however, is more of the same. 

New Orleans health director Dr. Jennifer Avegno went before the city council last month to present a vision for a new “public health” driven approach to gun violence — describing the killings in the city, which have reached the highest levels in years, as an epidemic.

She emphasized the need for robust programming to address the underlying conditions of violence, along with targeted interventions to interrupt conflicts before they escalate to violence and provide services to those most likely to be involved.

 “There must be a community-wide, public-private collaborative with real infrastructure and capacity that works solely on a violence reduction strategy and can implement it quickly,” Avegno told the council. “This group should survive political administrations. It should be highly resourced.”

 It was presented as a new approach. But it sounded remarkably similar to the plan Mayor LaToya Cantrell rolled out when she created the now-embattled Office of Gun Violence Prevention just two years ago.

The health language is the trendy branding now, which is why councilmembers have asked the Health Department to come in on this. But really we're just proceeding along the same path as ever. "Ultimately" it won't be the Health Department, or any city department anyway. 

Currently, she said, she is working on a “landscape analysis” of existing public health and intervention programming in the city meant to address violence to determine what should be continued and what could be scrapped — including, ostensibly, those programs previously being run by the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.  

“What programs do we have?” she said. “Who are they serving? How many people are they serving? Do we have evidence to suggest that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing? Or that they’re effective? What are the gaps?” 

Initially she plans to advocate for several initial allocations of federal funding to get started on “catalytic” programs that she believes already have shown evidence of effectiveness — mostly money from the American Rescue Plan Act. Like past iterations of violence reduction programs in the city, she said that ultimately she anticipates that much of the funding will be routed to independent non-profits to do the work of violence prevention. 

We're just setting up to drop all the public money down to the same old non-profit industrial complex through a slightly different chute.  What will it do when it gets there?  Well, we already know that too.  Same thing it's been doing. 

Perhaps the most robust program included in the report is an initiative launched in Chicago in 2017 called the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI), which uses referrals from community organizations, along with an analytics tool based on law enforcement data to identify individuals with the “highest risk for violence involvement” and provides them with twelve months of programing that includes subsidized employment, cognitive behavioral therapy, skills training, and other support services. According to Asher’s report, participation in READI significantly reduced the likelihood of arrest for homicide or shooting, as well as the possibility of victimization. That program costs around $20,000 per participant.

The READI program claims that the list of individuals they develop is never shared with law enforcement, but the use of similar predictive data analytic tools has proved controversial in New Orleans in the past. 

The "most robust" program involves taking federal money intended to help people suffering the effects of the pandemic economic displacement and not actually doing anything to help them.  Instead of addressing basic needs, instead of working to make people housing and food secure, we're going to put them on a pre-crime list and subject them to "behavioral therapy and skills training."  In other words we're not helping the victims of the disaster so much as we're keeping them from getting out of line or becoming less compliant workers. 

And, of course, as the article goes on to explain, this isn't anything new or different from what's been going on for years through successive administrations. 

In 2018, The Verge revealed that Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration had been quietly using software developed by the technology company Palantir to produce a list of individuals to target as part of the Group Violence Reduction Strategy — part of his broader NOLA for Life murder reduction effort. Some of those individuals were “called-in” with social service providers and various law-enforcement agencies and given the option to participate in social programs or be subject to “enhanced prosecution.” 

After the agreement with Palantir lapsed in 2018, The Lens obtained emails showing that the Cantrell administration was working to develop another tool utilizing law enforcement data to identify individuals with the help of sociologist Andrew Papachristos — this time to target for “impactful social interventions.” But little was made public about the effort, and civil liberties groups again raised transparency concerns, along with questions about how the information would be used and whether or not it would be shared with law enforcement. 

It is unclear what, if any, new tools might be utilized in the new effort being developed by the health department to identify individuals.

The reason it's unclear what might be new is... none of this is new. We're all just going to keep doing what we're doing: Handing out public money to privatized formations of political cronies create phony "anti-crime" programs that, in reality, only continue to harm people.  If anyone ever starts to get wise to this grift, there's always another mayor to symbolically slaughter so we can start it all over again.

That thing where all the investigations cancel each other out

Oh boy, we've reached the going around and confiscating everyone's computer phase of the game. 

New Orleans Inspector General Ed Michel’s office has seized the computer of a city IT worker involved in the “smart city” contracting process, an indication that the canceled project has spawned an investigation from the city’s top watchdog.

The IG seizure of a city computer assigned to Christopher Wolff occurred on Wednesday, according to Wolff's attorney and City Council President Helena Moreno.

Wolff’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy, told Moreno’s office that the seizure would complicate his ability to comply with an subpoena request from the City Council for reams of documents related to the smart city project.

Thinking back to the Hard Rock aftermath, recall that there were at least three or four independent investigations into the Safety and Permits department operated by the feds, by the City Council, by the Inspector General, and I don't remember who Ken Polite was working for at the time but he was there too.  Anyway it seemed at times that the various probes hired by various entities with different interests may have worked at cross purposes a little bit.  

That might be what's about to happen with the "Smart Cities" mess. We can't give you any evidence because somebody else already came and took it, etc. 

Also it's worth remembering what happened the last time city officials had to turn over digital evidence during an investigation of a tech corruption scandal. 

After a public solicitation, Nagin hired the Louisiana Technology Council to conduct a forensic search. He fired the group in July after its president, Mark Lewis, and a colleague held a news conference to say they failed to find any of the information. They also said they suspected a tech-savvy person had intentionally removed the mayor's e-mail inbox from the server months earlier.

Nagin then hired SunBlock to resume searching for the missing data. He also asked the new firm to review and report on LTC's efforts.

In its report, SunBlock dismisses LTC's claim that Nagin's files were deliberately erased, saying LTC misinterpreted a technical analysis used to detect whether data were deleted.

I guess we're about to find out how far the science of email deletion/undeletion has advanced over the course of the last decade. 

Will we ever Make It Right?

We have to say it's a remarkable trip the City of New Orleans has been on with short term rentals for the better part of the last decade only to end up right back where we started. We've been through years and years of hearings, hotly debated regulations that don't work, hotly debated revisions to those regulations that continue to not work, at one point we even decided to go the whole nine and turn enforcement responsibility over to an industry profiteer.  A whole lot of things have happened. But also nothing has changed.  This article says it's "inexplicable" but is it?  

With New Orleans' spring tourism season in full swing, the Cantrell administration’s stated plan to crack down on illegal short-term rentals is inexplicably stalled, leaving scofflaw operators to freely list unpermitted rentals on Airbnb and other online booking platforms.

Pinning down just how many unpermitted rentals are available is nigh impossible, but data provided by the technology firm Granicus, combined with City Hall's short-term rental registry, suggests they outnumber legitimate ones at least 3 to 1.

There's probably a very simple explanation, actually. Helena Moreno seems pretty close to getting it right here. 

Council member Helena Moreno said she is baffled by the administration’s flagging enforcement efforts. 

 “With the lack of enforcement and slow-walking of accountability measures, it makes me wonder whether this is purposeful,” Moreno said.

It's hard not to think that. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the city would be leaving so much money on the table. As Moreno also points out, the city has somehow never managed to give anyone a straight answer as to how much money it actually collects in fees and fines under the current STR enforcement regime. Strange behavior for an administration that has been otherwise diligent in chasing down drivers ticketed by its robots or shutting down any street parade or music venue not able to pay the premium fees. We know the city wants to collect its money.  It's just particular about who actually has to pay. 

Now I'm not honestly recommending that any normal person with actual things to do tries this, but, for those who really must, you can view last Wednesday's meeting of the city revenue estimating conference here.  Watching these meetings one gets a (rather grim) feel for what this administration's ideas are about the city's economy and who it is supposed to serve. For example, during a discussion on employment numbers, Gilbert Montano briefly references the "Great Resignation" to signal his sympathy with the "people don't want to work" myth popular among bosses these days. (Actually the labor participation rate is nearly back to pre-pandemic status now. But that isn't going to stop the ownership class from demanding we continue to shred what's left of the social safety net just in case any workers out there feel even the slightest hope.) At the REC, the Cantrell administration generally sound like they are the corporate board of a big hotel. Almost all of the metrics highlighted in their presentation are based on how well the tourism business is going; how many visitors fly in and out, how many hotel rooms are occupied, etc.  The first time I saw LaToya Cantrell speak publicly about short term rentals her comments were already very much shaped by a hospitality management mindset. Even while she assented to the point that they may be raising housing costs, she basically looked past that to assert that New Orleans is a "destination city" and that STRs are a source of revenue.

But Cantrell is "the mayor right now" and somehow all that revenue isn't finding its way into city coffers. Property values are up, rents are way way way up,  but according to city projections, property tax revenue is down slightly.  At the meeting, much of the discussion about that centered on assessor Erroll Williams. In September, Williams granted across the board breaks to property owners following Hurricane Ida.  The fact that Williams's office has apparently granted some invalid corporate exemptions was also mentioned. 

Near the end of 2020, three local government agencies denied tax breaks for planned improvements to the Folgers coffee plants in New Orleans East. But only now, more than a year later, has the assessor put the properties onto the tax rolls, making the company liable for $5.1 million in real estate levies.

Assessor Erroll Williams blames the Louisiana Department of Economic Development for the delay. That agency blames Williams.

That T-P story details circular arguments from the assessor and from LED about who is supposed to inform whom about ITEP denials. But, I dunno, I think one thing an assessor might do in a case like this  is call somebody and ask?

Williams said his office was following its standard practice: Don't put properties on the rolls while their applications for tax breaks are still pending. He said his office asked the state about Folgers in February because the state database did not yet show the tax breaks were denied and he had received no formal paperwork from any agency saying a decision on the breaks had been made.

"This office hasn’t gotten a letter from the School Board, city of New Orleans or the Sheriff’s Office that they’ve decided to vote the contract down, so I can’t put a taxpayer on the rolls based on what I read in the newspaper," Williams said.

The status was not changed to “denied” until March, at which point Williams said his staff began working to put the properties on the tax rolls.

The state agency said it “does not notify local taxing authorities about the actions of local government entities involved in the ITEP application review process. Questions about when and how the exemption is applied at the local level are best directed to each local taxing authority.”

Hard to believe these people can't all get together and talk one way or another. This just isn't that big a town.  Especially now that nobody actually lives here. Who can afford to, anyway?

Anyway, not to give the REC any more work to do but it turns out there are other places to dig for lost property tax money if they're feeling hard up. 

In total, Make It Right owes $14,972.81 in back taxes and fines, which are added to a property’s tax bill once they become delinquent. Most of that debt was accumulated in 2021, when the foundation failed to pay taxes on any one of its properties. And It’s possible that number will grow even higher for unpaid 2022 taxes, which are due today, March 31. 

According to the city’s online tax records database, the foundation owes $9,493 in 2022 property taxes. But The Lens was unable to confirm that the foundation has not paid that down. It appears that the city’s digital property tax records haven’t been updated to show whether property owners have yet paid their 2022 taxes. Officials did not respond to questions about the group’s 2022 property taxes.

Or maybe this is another thing where they've got to wait on Erroll to update the spreadsheet. 

One last point about the REC. Montano et al are still being extremely cautious with their use of the American Rescue Plan dollars by projecting it out over the course of a five year hypothetical revenue gap instead of applying it toward the addressing the city's numerous critical human services and infrastructure needs. (Notice how they are not shy about throwing that money at police as fast as they can, however.)  Back in August, we wrote more about how this administration's ideological conservatism informs its approach to budgeting.   On Wednesday, the projections we saw did not account for the next tranche of ARP dollars promised to cities because there was still talk in Washington about clawing those funds back in the next spending authorization.  As of this writing, though, it looks like that money is still coming.

Under the emerging deal, Mr. Romney, said, most of the $10 billion would be repurposed from the $1.9 trillion pandemic law Democrats muscled through without Republican support last March. But direct funds for state and local governments would likely not be touched, after Democrats balked at this money being clawed back. Mr. Romney said negotiators had discussed taking back some funding from a program that allowed states to give grants to local businesses.

That's pretty good news. But it could be better.  The way it looks right now the primary benefit of the federal bailout is it allows the city to keep letting wealthy property owners slide on their responsibility at the current rate. Without it, they'd still do that, of course. But they'd have to crack down even harder on the poor than they currently do to make up the difference.

The pace of evolving expectations

A Krewe du Vieux sub-krewe of TOKIN float sports the mock Entergy slogan "We're not happy until you're not happy"

 

So a few weeks ago, when we last mentioned that we wanted to do more posts, we were reminiscing about the fast one Walt Leger and LaToya Cantrell pulled on everybody when their so called "fair share" legislation actually empowered the tourism moguls to steal public money under the false pretense of funding infrastructure. Since then (on that very day, in fact) another, and similarly dubious, infrastructure deal was collapsing.

This story stretches back to last summer when the city announced a deal with Entergy whereby the utility would finance construction of a new substation supposed to create more reliable power generation for pumps operated by the Sewerage and Water Board. The announcement came right about the time of the mayor's reelection campaign launch. Her campaign twitter account hailed it as "Promises kept." But, now, we learn that Entergy has broken its part of that promise. 

Entergy said in a prepared statement on Monday that it could not afford its portion of the $74 million deal, at least for now. That could change if “financial stability is restored,” the statement said.

Under the terms of a deal announced last June, the city was set to kick in $22 million from a bond issue to pay for frequency changers that convert Entergy power to an older standard compatible with the city’s pumps. State construction financing would contribute more than $20 million to the project, with Entergy handling the rest.

Entergy originally only committed to $34 million up front.  But even that wasn't really a plan to spend their own money.  

The $74 million will come from three different sources. The initial $34 million investment to build the substation will come from Entergy. The Sewerage and Water Board will then pay Entergy back for that investment over time.

So what they are saying right now is they are too cash poor to just raise the upfront capital?  $34 million? That doesn't sound right.  What could have happened between June and now to cause this highly profitable mega-corporation to suddenly not have $34 million to throw at something? And don't say Hurricane Ida, you frauds....  

Oh dammit.. 

Entergy said the cost of repairing its own system from Hurricane Ida damage made fronting the money too difficult right now.

“Entergy New Orleans was discussing the unusual step of financing a substation for the S&WB given its financial condition,” Entergy spokeswoman Lee Sabatini said. “Subsequent to those initial negotiations, Hurricane Ida hit Entergy New Orleans’ service area, which further strained the company’s own financial condition by having to fund large amounts of storm costs with uncertainty around the timing and mechanism to recover those costs.”

Oh no Ida ate up all the money.  Hey, did Entergy still manage to pay out huge sums to shareholders in dividends and buybacks after Ida? Do we even have to ask?

Last month, Entergy New Orleans revealed it was pulling funding from a vital city project to shore up the city’s flood defenses. Citing the massive cost of recovering from Hurricane Ida, the company said it could no longer fulfill its commitment to loan $30 million to the Sewerage and Water Board.

Four days later, the utility’s parent company, Entergy Corp. announced quarterly shareholder dividend payments at $1.01 per share, totaling $202 million. 

The two announcements, side by side, are indicative of what several utility experts told The Lens is a broader trend for Entergy, and for utility monopolies across the country — insulating shareholders from risk and shifting the burden to customers.

Incredible. Why on earth would Entergy prioritize parasitic profit taking over the service needs of the ratepayers from whom those profits are extracted? Well, see, that's actually how it's supposed to work. 

Like other utility companies, Entergy stock doesn’t offer investors big growth potential. To make up for it, the company dedicates a huge portion of its annual earnings — over 60 percent on average — to ensure its quarterly shareholder payments remain steady and predictable. In a statement, an Entergy spokesperson said that keeping the dividend high and protecting the stock price also benefits customers by making it cheaper for the company to raise cash for infrastructure investments.

See?  Keep the stockholders nice and happy and they will reward you with "infrastructure investments."  Like, for example, the new substation that will... wait a minute.... 

Well anyway it's complicated. You just keep paying your bill. Whatever amount it says on there.

According to the presentation, Entergy New Orleans boasts a 99.1 percent accuracy rate on bills. Leslie Dennis, who works in Entergy’s billing department, said that the company would try to get that number even higher by expanding auditing and improving staff training. 

“We recognize we may have some human performance errors,” Dennis said. 

But the presentation stopped short of explaining, beyond the issue of accuracy, whether customer bills are actually rising. Sandra Diggs-Miller, Entergy New Orleans’ vice president of customer service, implied that recent customer complaints about high bills have more to do with rising expectations, rather than rising bills. 

“We recognize that our customers’ expectations are evolving at a pace that admittedly outpaces the level of engagement we’re providing as a company. The billing complaints we’ve seen are certainly a byproduct of that.”

It is time to get your expectations back down to a reasonable pace that Entergy can keep up with. In other words, try and be more like the New Orleans city council. Already they have adjusted their expectations all the way back down so far that they are ready to subsidize Entergy's shareholder bonanza by spending COVID relief funds allocated to the city by the American Rescue Plan.  

Thursday’s measures still have to be passed by the full City Council. At Thursday’s budget committee* meeting, Councilwoman Helena Moreno said the new funding presents an even better deal than the original plan. She pointed out that under the financing plan in the original proposal, the Sewerage and Water Board would have to pay Entergy back $85 million over 15 years. 

“This to me is a no-brainer,” Moreno said. “If we look at this project, and compare it to the original deal that we had with Entergy, this is actually much more beneficial to the Sewerage and Water Board.”

There is some apprehension, however, from Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration. While the administration says it’s supportive of using federal funds for the substation, it had concerns about the exact financing model proposed by the council.

The Cantrell administration is non-committal because they are trying to use the ARP money to hire more cops which is probably a worse idea than covering for Entergy.  But that still doesn't make Helena Moreno's proposal a "no-brainer." It's true what she says there about the original plan requiring SWB to pay Entergy back over time.  That was one of our first complaints, in fact, back when the scheme was announced last year. But I don't think we should let any of that distract from the fact that we are still using public money to subsidize a ka-billion dollar private utility company specifically in order for it to continue paying out as much cash to its shareholders as possible.  There is something fundamentally very wrong with that. And it's not just a matter of one local dispute over powering our antiquated pumps. Instead it is one small manifestation of a larger trend in public-private finance. 

Here is a short article published in November by the economist Daniela Gabor.  She is writing about the finance discussions at the COP26 international climate conference held in Glasgow last year. The thrust of the analysis is that central banks and governments have backed away from taking the necessary aggressive steps to mitigate climate change and instead turned the very fate of the planet over to private finance.

The macrofinancial politics of COP26 should be understood as status-quo financial capitalism now entering its green age. Day three of the Conference of the Parties was Finance Day, rather than green public investment day, because of the growing political consensus in the Global North that decarbonization must be finance-led. In a 2021 paper, I termed this the Wall Street Consensus. If the Washington Consensus had its most articulate ambassador in economist John Williamson, the Wall Street Consensus has Mark Carney, the head of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the UN Special Envoy for Climate Finance, and the intellectual author of the green turn in central banking.

GFANZ gave COP26 its big decarbonization number: USD 130 trillion “relentlessly, ruthlessly focused on net zero.” To put that number in perspective, at COP26 rich countries failed again to honor their pledge for USD 100 billion per year in climate finance for poor countries. There was greenwashing even in the headline number, since USD 130 trillion was not the estimated credit flow about to inundate green sectors, but rather the combined assets under management of GFANZ members, many issued to finance dirty activities. 

But those USD 130 trillion would not find their way into climate-friendly activities, GFANZ members like BlackRock’s Larry Fink argued, without a little help. Of course, Larry Fink was not calling for mandatory decarbonization, but for public policy and private firms to work together on climate in the same way that they worked together on vaccines. John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, translated such calls for public-private partnerships into Wall Street Consensus lingo: “Blend the finance, de-risk the investment, and create the capacity to have bankable deals. That’s doable for water, it’s doable for electricity, it’s doable for transportation.” 

This is the Wall Street Consensus mantra: the state and development aid, including multilateral development banks, should escort the trillions managed by private finance into climate or the Sustainable Development Goals asset classes. The state derisks or “blends” by using public resources (official aid or local fiscal revenues) to align the risk-return profile of those assets (“bankable projects”) with investor preferences or mandates. Transforming climate or nature into asset classes necessitates the commodification and financialization of public goods and social infrastructure, beyond water, electricity and transportation, and including housing, education, healthcare; these have to generate cash flows that pay institutional investors. The consensus understands the state as a derisking agent: its fiscal arm enters public-private partnerships to render them bankable by transferring some of the risks to the balance sheet of the sovereign, while its monetary arm protects investors from liquidity and exchange rate risk. 

Reading through that one begins to see the ideology reflected in our local government's willingness to use federal funds of which it is a steward not for their ostensible purpose of building sustainable infrastructure but instead for propping up the finances of a private utility company.   In essence, our politicians have ceased to understand that those goals are inherently in conflict.  Instead, their purpose is to "de-risk" the investment of Entergy shareholders at the expense of US taxpayers (and, of course, Entergy ratepayers.) Wealth transfers upward, risk shifts downward. Nothing else is guaranteed for anyone.  Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Big dickish Entergy

 That crazy spike in your bill last month? Yeah, according to Entergy, that's how it's supposed to work. 

Responding to Entergy customers who in some cases have taken to social media to blast sharp spikes in their power bills this month, utility officials said they can blame colder weather, reduced holiday travel and a longer-than-typical billing cycle.

Other factors contributing to increases include a rise in natural gas prices and power purchases Entergy made in December, the utility said. 

The utility, which provides electricity for more than 1.2 million customers and natural gas for more than 200,000 others across the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas, was responding to a scourge of recent complaints from residents on social media about higher bills. 

Strange that Advocate article maintains Entergy's emphasis on the "y'all use too much power"  issue and doesn't elaborate very much on the "power purchases Entergy made in December." Instead it just passes on David Ellis's assertion that, "the utility shut down two of its plants for routine maintenance, which likely added between $8 and $12 to the average customer's bill."  There's a little more detail on that available from Channel 6 here. 

While the increases surprised customers when they received January’s bill in the mail, the utility did forewarn the New Orleans City Council of anticipated higher costs, in a letter dated Dec. 18.

In it, the utility writes: “ … the key driver of the variance is a $3.9 million increase in the fuel costs. Most of this increase is due to two generating plant outages, one at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station (“Grand Gulf”) and another at Union Power Station (“UPB1”). Grand Gulf entered an unplanned outage on November 6, 2020 during which necessary maintenance work was performed. Following completion of the unplanned outage, the unit entered a planned outage that ended on December 3. UPB1 took a planned outage to install a 2.0 MW emergency diesel generator, which outage lasted from October 23, 2020 to November 24, 2020."

"Unplanned outage" at the nuclear power plant (yikes!) necessitating repairs in November. Was the "planned outage" affected by or related to the unplanned one?  Also, how often does this happen?  Pretty often, apparently.

Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, said the causes of these spikes are multi-faceted. She said there is a two-month lag for fuel adjustment charges, so any increase in usage from the holidays and the colder weather between Thanksgiving and Christmas will be seen now.

However, there were two Entergy power plants that went down in November. The Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Mississippi and the Union Power Station in Arkansas both suffered outages.

Why does this matter?

When those power plants go down, Entergy customers still pay for power from those plants and for whatever additional power Entergy had to buy on the energy market to compensate for their plant outages. The Grand Gulf plant, in particular, has had many problems in recent years.

“Grand Gulf has been having difficulties since 2016,” Burke said. “Every time it goes down, we (the customers) have to pay for it.”

In 2019, The Lens asked about the ongoing problems at Grand Gulf which happened at the time to be, "the least reliable nuclear generator in the US, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group."  They also asked Entergy about its management of the "planned" outages and their effect on people's bills. 

The Lens sent the company a list of questions to the company about reliability problems at the plant. In response, spokesperson Neal Kirby provided a brief written statement that only addressed the planned 2020 outage, but wrote that he could not reveal how long it will be. 

“The 2020 outage at Entergy’s Grand Gulf Nuclear Station is planned for refueling and maintenance at the plant,” Kirby wrote in an email. “We time these refueling outages when other generators and market purchases can be available to supply power economically to our customers. It is not appropriate to discuss the timing or length of outages because that is market sensitive business information.” 

No matter how long it is, the outage could be expensive for New Orleans residents. According to Entergy, outages at Grand Gulf can cost New Orleans customers upwards of $100,000 a day. In a letter to Councilwoman and utility chair Helena Moreno, Entergy New Orleans CEO David Ellis revealed that an eight day outage in December 2018 cost residents $1.15 million.

Notice that the company's response claims that planned outages are timed not to overlap (but also the timing is none of your business because of "market sensitive information" matters.) And yet here we are looking at bills inflated at least in part because of overlapping plant outages which Entergy claims (and the Advocate uncritically reports) to be "routine maintenance." 

The company pulled two power plants offline this winter for routine maintenance, which meant it had to purchase power on the open market as well. Natural gas costs rose by 12%, and a bill credit related to a 2017 corporate restructuring expired.

In any case, the ratepayers have to cover the cost of those plants whether they are buying power from them that month or not.  Sounds like a raw deal baked into the city's agreement with the utility. The good news is, as the regulatory body managing Entergy's monopoly, the City Council still has a few things it can do to provide relief.  For example it can direct Entergy to maintain the COVID emergency  moratorium on shut offs for overdue bills which it did this week.

It can also push them to implement more customer friendly policies such as the billing "heads-up" CM Moreno suggests here.

Before the vote, Moreno and Joe Giarrusso also urged Entergy to create programs to alert customers in real time about their power use.

Though that function was a promised capability of the advanced meters, Guillot said Entergy won't have it ready for another six months. 

Telling people 10 or so days into their billing cycle that they are using more power than normal will make higher bills less of a surprise or could prompt people to dial down their use if needed, Moreno said.

"There’s got to be some type of trigger to let customers know, over the phone or over email or whatever, so that habits can be changed," she said.

Although, frankly, that just reinforces Entergy's premise that it's really more the ratepayers than the company who are responsible for the high bills. In fact, it seems like they're already building on that narrative this week ahead of an expected change in the weather.  

At a recent council meeting to discuss Entergy customer bills that had doubled and in some cases tripled in January, council members asked if Entergy could provide notice if it saw conditions that were increasing usage - and bills.

Wednesday the company sent out a news release to advise customers of just that.

"Entergy’s Louisiana utilities are encouraging customers to prepare for cold weather and increased energy usage as portions of Louisiana could see low or freezing temperatures into the weekend and next week," said the statement in part.

Entergy also advised that heat usage can be up to 50 percent of a customer's bill during cold weather. The utility company advises people to set their thermostat lower, look for leaks and to reverse ceiling fans to push warm air down.  

Again, the problem is, "y'all use too much power." So turn down your thermostat and stop asking for "market sensitive business information" about whether or not that nuclear plant you are paying for is broken again. It's really not your place to know more than that.

Everybody pays some kinda rate

According to a presentation made at City Council, the recently enhanced City Utilities Regulatory Office has managed to save the city $1.2 million this year by performing functions that had been outsourced to two consulting firms who typically bill $600 an hour for their services.  

The two major utility consultants, Dentons and Legend Consulting Group, have contracts that allow them to bill up to a combined $5.6 million. But prior to the new accountability measures, the City Council was routinely forced to pass contract amendments that allowed the consultants to exceed the contract cap. The City Council didn’t have to do that this year.

“I just think that’s really amazing,” Moreno said. “We together worked long and hard trying to figure out what were the best protocols to put in place so that we really had increased oversight on the spending on our outside consultants. And because of this increased oversight and monitoring, we’ve been able to save ratepayers over a million dollars.”

That "ratepayers" thing threw me for a sec. So I had to go look back at the notes from last year where we saw in prior reporting that "most of the consulting costs" are passed on to Entergy ratepayers. 

Those contracts are far and away the most lucrative awarded by the council, adding up to nearly $7 million a year. Most of those costs are paid by Entergy, but they’re ultimately passed on to ratepayers through their utility bills. Some observers question how such a prized gig could remain locked down by the same people and firms for so long.

But given the pass-through nature of the savings, it's still an open question as to whether this is going to have much of an effect on your light bill this year.  Most of us were expecting to see at least a $1.50 increase as of last month.

Nobody wants this big pile of money

Last week, City Council passed a non-binding resolution instructing the Criminal District Court to stop collecting conviction and bail fees from defendants and to return money to people from whom they've already collected these fees.  Supposedly, the idea is to discourage the courts from hoovering up unnecessary money from the poor and indigent who make up the vast majority of people wrung through our brutal criminal justice system. But there are problems.

To begin with, at least some of these fees (the bail fees) are mandated by state law which supersedes the council's authority so at least some of this money has to be collected. The courts are already in a state of limbo regarding that money since a different state law passed this year instructs them to hand it over to the city.  The new law is intended to eliminate a perverse incentive whereby the courts use these fees to fund their own operations. As a result of a 2018 lawsuit ruling that forbids the judges from keeping the funds, they've been collecting in a separate escrow account. 

Anyway that's as good a job as I can do summarizing the Lens's article.  The point is, because we haven't yet managed to ban cash bail altogether, there is a tub full of money that the courts aren't allowed to keep but the city council asserts that it does not want.  

OR maybe they do want it. 

At a City Council Criminal Justice Committee meeting last week, prior to the passage of the resolution, Councilwoman Helena Moreno wondered what would happen with the money judges do not have discretion over collecting. 

“So let’s say that the judges say, OK, the city isn’t going to collect, so it’s not worth imposing some of these additional fines and fees,” Moreno said. “But for those that through state law — statutorily — they have to, and it ends up in the escrow account, what do we do with the money in the escrow account?”

Will Snowden, executive director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, said that money from mandatory fees would go to the city, as is prescribed by state law. 

“This resolution can’t address those mandatory fines that the judges are required to assess on an individual. I know specifically, the bail fee is not something they have discretion in not imposing. That’s a fee that is assigned to every bail that is already set. So my understanding is those funds going into the escrow account — those bail fees — that escrow account will go on to the city as it is currently prescribed.”

“So then it would be up to [the annual city budget passed by the council] on how we use the escrow account, is that right?” Moreno asked.

The subsequent discussion between Moreno and Kristin Palmer there suggests the council could return the money to individuals themselves.  Something tells me that's going to be more easily said than done. 

Something else tells me, it won't be what they choose anyway.