Congrats, Walt

I resolved to do more posts in 2022. I haven't done more posts yet.  Will do more posts soon. Seriously. Like I said before, I've got a a big backlog of notes and outlines of things I could have written months ago but never got around to.  I've also got some "draft" posts that are really just bookmarks of single items I read in the news but didn't want to forget. I've always tried to put things like that on the blog so I can find them later. Gonna try to get back in that habit as well soon. Anyway, if I end up posting some stuff that seems like old news this is why. This is going to be a very dark year, I am afraid, for a lot of reasons.  Not sure what to do about it other than just try to keep the notes straight as it happens. 

For example, in December, we learned that Walt Leger is finally getting his "fair share" of the spoils he earned guiding the legislation that the mayor called a Fair Share for the city but which actually just gave the Convention Center more control over its slush fund and made the privately operated but publicly funded New Orleans and Co. tourism promotion corporation even richer and less accountable to the public.  

As a reward, Walt will get to run the unaccountable private tourism promotion corporation. 

Stephen Perry, the outspoken longtime leader of New Orleans' tourism and marketing agency, will step down at the end of next year, he said Thursday.

He will be replaced as CEO of New Orleans & Co., the private, publicly-funded nonprofit, by former state legislator Walter “Walt” Leger III, an attorney and former Speaker Pro Tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives. Leger is currently executive vice president and general counsel at New Orleans & Co.

Sharp elbows

Whoa hey watch out!

On Monday, in an extraordinary power play, Peterson ousted the highly regarded chairman of the gambling board, Ronnie Jones, during a private session of the Louisiana Senate where senators could exercise a little-known authority to veto appointees of Gov. John Bel Edwards and other statewide elected officials to dozens of boards and commissions.

Besides representing New Orleans in the Senate, Peterson is the long-time chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party, so her surprise decision also puts her at odds with Edwards, the state’s most prominent Democrat. On Tuesday, he sharply criticized the failure to confirm Jones without mentioning Peterson.

Peterson’s move, which she has not explained publicly, targeted Jones and four other appointees, including Walt Leger III, a former colleague in the Legislature and speaker pro tem who has now lost his job as chairman of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

The Advocate spends a lot of space in this article focusing on KCP's personal gambling problem which she has publicly admitted to and sought help for. The implication is that Jones was responsible for leaking that information originally and this action is from Peterson is payback for that.  While that might be possible, it seems a bit petty and I would rather think there is something more than just that going on.

And anyway, KCP's dispatching Jones isn't even the really interesting thing going on here. Her ejecting Walt Leger from the Convention Center board is. 

Leger, meanwhile, was an influential member of the state House for 12 years before term limits last year sidelined him. Edwards tabbed him to chair the Convention Center. The governor had to choose him from a list of names forwarded by the hospitality industry.

“I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear that I wasn’t confirmed and how that went down,” Leger said Tuesday. Asked about his relationship with Peterson, he said, “We’ve worked very closely to represent the same constituencies.”

This part of the story seems like the much bigger deal and we would hope to find more follow-up on it soon. The Convention Center and its slush fund are a major flash point in city politics right now.  This Lens op-ed from representatives of the Fair Fund coalition explains.

As in previous emergencies, the COVID-19 crisis brought out the best in many of us. Countless heroes distinguished themselves from a handful of people who put their own narrow business and political interests first.  Such was and continues to be the case with the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and its governing board, the Exhibition Hall Authority (EHA).

A group of recently laid-off hospitality workers, unions, and advocacy organizations knew the board could do more to help our city. We formed the Coalition for a Fair Fund for Hospitality Workers and formulated the demand that the board of the Convention Center transfer $100 million, the equivalent of $1,000 per hospitality worker, to an independent fund with robust community oversight that could administer relief directly to all tourism and hospitality workers in a fair, legal, and transparent way.

Asked by these activists to put some of the $200 million plus ($235 million according to this article) they've stolen from the public over the years to good use helping out hospitality workers displaced by the pandemic, the Convention Center board recently voted instead to "donate" an infinitesimal fraction of that money to private non profit foundations managed by their wealthy compatriots. Not only is the amount an outright insult, when filtered through the usual con-profit money laundering circle of philanthropic elites and cronies connected to the board members, it's as if they're spending it on themselves anyway.

In days past, it would have been fairly simple for the board to roll over workers like this.  But the politics are a little more volatile these days and things get messy as the players scramble to reposition themselves.  This is cause for some optimism, I suppose, but it's also important to remain skeptical.  For example, many have taken notice of the city council's willingness to support the hospitality workers with words and with non-binding resolutions.  However, others of us are not impressed yet.  I mean, at first, it seems like Kristen Palmer is saying the right thing here. But is she?

Earlier this month, City Councilwoman Kristin Palmer said, in an interview with The Lens, that there was a fundamental shift in power that had to occur within the industry. Palmer wasn’t speaking directly about the coalition’s demand for $100 million. But she said that the Convention Center should be more focused on direct short-term relief for workers and less focused on its long-term development plans worth more than $1 billion.

“Their value systems are wrong,” she said. “My shtick now is: Poverty is expensive and charity doesn’t work. That’s the reality. It’s a power structure. The power structure is ‘look how great it is we’re giving to these people.’ That’s a power structure that needs to be changed.”

Being concerned about how the political power structure affects poverty in New Orleans, is your new "shtick" now?  That's nice. Please give us some notice when you want to workshop the act again sometime.

Mayor Cantrell is also trying to make sure her act plays to the right crowd in these changing times. Although the mayor is frequently a lighting rod for criticism, she's proven more than adept at navigating difficult political situations over the course of her first term. By which we mean she has a fantastic instinct for duplicity. Cantrell spent much of 2019 appearing to wrangle with the hospitality industry over various piles of dedicated funds. The fight may have embellished her "populist" image in the media but the deal she struck actually ended up being a huge capitulation to the tourism owners.

This was accomplished thanks, in no small part, to Walt Leger who, as a State Rep. wrote and shepherded the legislation that allowed Cantrell to claim "victory" while also legitimizing the convention center's reserve fund of misappropriated tax revenue.  As a reward for these services, Leger was given a seat on... chairmanship of, even... the Convention Center board immediately after leaving the legislature. By the end of 2019, the tourism cabal was happy, LaToya was happy, Walt was doing well. Working class people in New Orleans were still being victimized by the political aristocracy.  Everything was in equilibrium.

But then a series of new crises came along and knocked everything apart. The Hard Rock collapse created new points of tension between the mayor and the city's land development and tourism class, exposed her to new political flack, and opened a crease in city finances. All of this was exacerbated by a Carnival season fraught with multiple tragedies and the city's controversial handling of its response. By the time the COVID crisis turned the whole world inside out, the happy feelings between the mayor and her sometime friends in business community had all but disintegrated.

So, despite all of the previous year's efforts, the mayor still finds herself at odds with tourism promoters.  This week, even as the city cautiously prepares to move into a "Phase 2" reopening, the reactionary crowd of tourism business tyrants has grown bolder in criticizing the shutdown. Critics have become so bold, in fact, that rumors had been circulating about a possible "Business Community" candidate challenging Cantrell in the next election. That would seem ill advised for a number of reasons but there's no accounting for these people and their sense of entitlement.

In any case, it's interesting that we find Cantrell's friend and ally, KCP taking a sharp elbow to Leger now given this context. Was she sending a message? It's been a busy week since, so this story has faded into the background a bit but we'd like to hear more.

The day the rent stood still

Well here we are at the first turn of a new month in the Time Of The Covid. Rent is due. How many are able to pay?  Even after three emergency acts of Congress and a few local declarations meant to protect renters, the answer is probably not as many as you may think. The emergency net we've thrown up has many holes.

The recently passed federal stimulus "CARES" act includes a ban on evictions and late fees that extends only until the end of July. After that, there's nothing to stop anyone being told to pay back rent or else. On top of that, the federal ban only applies to properties receiving federally backed mortgages or government subsidies.  If your landlord owns the building outright, you are on your own.  For the time being, renters in New Orleans are protected by a temporary postponement of eviction hearings in the City Courts until April 24.  The Governor has also suspended evictions statewide until April 13. Both of those dates will likely be extended but probably not for very long.

In the meantime, a lot of people are still being evicted through extra-legal means. Landlords are either sending out threatening notices or just physically locking tenants out of buildings.  If this is happening to you, by the way, you may try contacting Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, or the City Office of Community Development. Beyond that, though, homeowners and renters facing foreclosure or eviction have only inadequate protections which may or may not be extended on a month to month basis.

The only way to provide a more reliable form of relief is for Congress to step back in with a "Phase IV" stimulus bill. The previous efforts have done nothing to provide Americans with the certainty they will need to make it through the 12-18 months before we expect a COVID vaccine could be available. Only the federal government can do this. That's where the big money gun is. We just haven't fired it in the right direction yet.

As long as no one is sure when they'll be able to work, people are going to need an income. The plan to get it to them already exists. We just need to make it happen.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), for example, proposed giving everyone $2,000 on prepaid debit cards, then $1,000 per month until a year after the public health emergency subsides. Recurring payments had been a Democratic priority the party was unable to achieve in the bill that passed last week.

Unfortunately the designs for this and other necessary expanded safety net spending have become mired in the latest iteration of the perpetually doomed "Infrastructure Week" package. We don't have time to wait, though.

Right now state and local governments are expected to expand services and maintain staffing levels while tax revenues plummet. they're going to need emergency funding.  Louisiana will get $1.8 billion from the CARES Act. We're all but certain that won't be enough.  The City of New Orleans expects to find itself with a $100 million budget deficit by the end of the year. Of the state's $1.8 billion, how much will be available to address the city's needs?  Right now it isn't clear if the city is guaranteed any of it.

The centerpiece of the state aid is the $150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund, which state, tribal, and local governments can use this year to meet costs connected to the virus. Each state will receive at least $1.25 billion — though the District of Columbia will only receive about $500 million — while the most populous states (California and Texas) will receive over $10 billion each, we estimate.  In most states, a portion of the funding will go to local governments serving populations over 500,000. Tribal governments will receive $8 billion.

New Orleans's current population is probably not even 400,000 (fill out your Census form, by the way) so it's very likely we're all at the mercy of the state government. Whenever the legislature manages to reconvene, we'll talk about that then.

But hey do you know who does have $100 million just sitting around right now?  That's right. It's our friends at the Convention Center. The times being what they are right now, though, you can't just have a stash like that doing nothing without somebody taking notice.

A coalition of 21 local unions, advocacy organizations and other groups are calling on the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Convention Center to release $100 million out of its unrestricted cash reserves to support hospitality industry workers who are out of work due to the coronavirus crisis.

The Convention Center has recently reported somewhere between $185 million and $215 million in unrestricted reserves, which it has accumulated through the collection of locally generated hotel, food and beverage taxes. In 2018 and 2019, those collections exceeded $65 million.

Convention Center officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story, including questions about the current value of its reserves.

Ha ha I'm sure they didn't.  Hell they just spent all of last year fighting with (well, okay more like doing a Kabuki play with) the mayor over whether or not this particular pile of money ought to be paying for city infrastructure repairs. Thanks to Walt Leger's work in the legislature, they got to hang onto it after all.  Guess what Walt Leger does now.

Accompanying the report on the rapid deterioration in the Convention Center's business outlook, on Tuesday board president Melvin Rodrigue said he would be stepping down from the position he has held since 2008.

Rodrigue, president and chief executive of Galatoire's, was recently elected as chair of the National Restaurant Association, a powerful lobbying group that has been pushing for relief measures for its hard-hit members. He has been in talks with the governor since late last year about a successor, he said Tuesday.

He will be replaced by Walt Leger III, a former state representative and the current general counsel for New Orleans & Co.

So is Walt going to turn around now and just give away all the money he earned his current job working so hard to secure?  Doesn't seem like it. But if service workers are still out of work, and rent keeps coming due month after month, and if no one in D.C. has fired off the money gun, then relief has to come from somewhere.  And seeing as how that $100 - $200 million was gathered off the backs of the very workers asking for it now, well, it looks like they've probably got dibs.

A modest proposal

I realize that it's bad that the Convention Center has been hiring prison slave labor for many of the vanity projects for wealthy New Orleans insiders it spends its slush fund on.  And at first glance we would like to put a stop that.

And now, board member Robert “Tiger” Hammond told The Lens he’s going to try to create a living wage requirement for Convention Center contractors. Unlike the New Orleans city government, the Convention Center doesn’t have conditions for how much its contractors have to pay their workers. The Convention Center board made an attempt to create a living wage requirement in 2017, but it didn’t get off the ground.

“Stay tuned on that, because next month I’m bringing that up as a proposal again,” Hammond told The Lens. “We have a much friendlier board now and next month I will be bringing that issue back up to light on the living wage.”

Hammond is the President of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, a union and labor advocacy organization.

“As a guy who represents labor, it doesn’t sit well when a person comes to me and says, ‘Wow, looks like you have to go to prison to get a job with the Convention Center these days,’ “ he said.

Hammond said he will propose that the Convention Center simply adopt and mirror the living wage ordinance used by the city, which requires contractors to pay employees a little over $11.19 per hour, adjusted each year for inflation.

On the other hand, I think a more elegant solution might be, if we actually put the corrupt operators who enable this system in the first place in prison themselves. That way we could pay Walt Leger 20 cents an hour to build fences and stuff. I mean if they're going to work for the tourism cabal anyway, they may as well do some actual work.

Why isn't Walt Leger in jail?

Seems like if you write the bill that allows the tourism cabal to continue stealing public money for another sixty years or so and then immediately take a job working for the tourism cabal, that would be the kind of corruption we might want to discourage.

Also on Tuesday, the Convention Center board’s finance committee voted to advance a resolution that redefines how its dedicated taxes are collected and how the money can be spent. The resolution is in large part a reflection of legislation passed by the Louisiana Legislature last year that allows the center to spend tax revenues on the $675 million hotel project and the entertainment district development. The bill was sponsored by then-state Rep. Walt Leger, who now works for New Orleans & Co., formerly the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Not in this city, though. Here we consider that sort of thing "business and economic leadership."  The Advocate invites such "leaders" to summits like this one where they hold forth on the great matters of business in the city for the upcoming year.  Walt was on that panel last week.  He told everybody there that it was time to "get creative."

Walter “Walt” Leger, the former Speaker Pro Tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives, who now is head of strategy and top legal adviser at New Orleans & Co., said there is a need to "be creative" in terms of raising money for needed education and infrastructure, like implementing a gas tax or public-private partnerships.

That's interesting. Walt's bill "creatively" preserved a public slush fund for the Convention Center to use for its own purposes of handing money over to rich developers for at least the next 50 years.  Meanwhile his advice for funding public transit and infrastructure seems to involve privatization.  How much is New Orleans and Co. paying him now?  And why do we not putting the entire lot of these grifters in prison?   

Probably because the systemic and massive theft of public resources by politically important oligarchs isn't nearly as worrisome to people as their suspicion that some teenagers they read about on Nextdoor might be doing some petty theft and vandalism in Lakeview.  For that, we lock down the schools and call half the NOPD in full body armor to come out and shoot at a 17 year old.  Afterward, the Advocate's opinion page makes certain to heap thanks upon the police and the paranoid residents who called them.

Walt Leger and his cronies are never going to jail. Because the ruling class of this city and their mouthpieces in the media decide what justice even is in the first place.

A steak in every pot

The Louisiana legislature is going back into session next week. (Yes, yes, run for your lives, winter is coming, abandon all hope, etc. etc.)  There's a ton of fun stuff to talk about with regard to that but we'll save that for later.  I only bring it up now in order to point us to HB 113 filed by Rep Walt Leger. Here is what that would do. 

Provides that at all regular elections of governor and lieutenant governor, the candidates for such offices shall be elected jointly in such a manner as provided bylaw so that a single vote shall be cast for a candidate for governor and a candidate for lieutenant governor running together.

He wants the Governor and Lt. Governor to run together on one ticket. I'm having trouble seeing the benefit. The Lt. Governor's power is (mostly) limited to oversight of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. Even in cases when the offices are occupied by rival or ideologically opposed individuals, it would be rare to find them working at cross purposes. It's true the current Lt. Governor has some pretty unsavory ideas about privatizing many functions of our state parks. It's also true that he's been trying to figure out how to put monuments to white supremacy recently removed from view in New Orleans back on public display.   But if Governor Edwards has any strong opposition to any of that, he hasn't bothered to let it be known.  It's generally easy for the the two of them to stay out of each other's way.

At the same time, it's hard to identify much downside to Leger's proposal.  Probably the biggest loss will be to politicians and the.. well.. industry of politics since it effectively takes one prestigious (if ineffectual) statewide elected office off the board. It's one less opportunity for candidates to show they can win a race of that scope. One less chance for staffers, consultants, and other hangers on to make a ton of money helping them do that. Maybe this is a good idea after all.

Both the Governor and Lt. Governor are up for reelection this fall but this bill won't affect any of that.  It's a constitutional amendment and would have to be ratified by popular vote first and there's no time for that before the current cycle. In a way, that sucks for John Bel because imagine the ticket he could put together here.

It’s no secret that Gov. John Bel Edwards and LSU coach Ed Orgeron have a special bromance. They’ve often appeared alongside each other at events promoting Louisiana and LSU.

On Thursday, Orgeron introduced Edwards at a fundraiser for Edwards’ re-election campaign, calling the Democrat incumbent “a man of great character, great integrity.”

Man that is an intimidating prospect. Coach O really knows how to give the people what they want.  

“Let ’em have their cell phones and headsets,” Orgeron said in a recent interview with SB Nation. “Let ’em dress the way they want! Let ’em be who they are, as long as it’s respectful. Don’t put shackles on them. And I know it works. I know it works. I had kids at USC hugging me, crying, when I left. Begging me, ‘Don’t leave.’"

In that same interview, he added that part of being both a good and impactful head coach starts with showing players that you actually care about them.

“Before, I didn’t let them know I cared. I was the D-line coach. You can’t coach a receiver like a D-lineman. I just realized, here are some of the things I’ve got to change. I started writing, and I came to a realization: If I treat these boys like I treat my sons, I think we’re gonna be fine. How do you treat your kids? When my boys come home, I cook ’em a steak.

Vote Edwards/Orgeron and they'll cook you a dang steak!  Nobody wants to run against that.  No wonder John Kennedy is so mad.   

“I don’t want to watch LSU football and have to wonder if the coach is a Democrat or Republican. I’m so angry at this,” U.S. Sen. John Kennedy said during a five-minute diatribe on Baton Rouge radio Friday morning – a day after Orgeron introduced Edwards during a breakfast fundraising event. “It is a horrible mistake to politicize LSU and LSU football. I’m stunned that the candidate would even entertain, much less accept, the endorsement.”

Is that really the problem, John?  Politicizing LSU football?  It's not like that's never been done.  That very same article goes on to point out one recent example.

Former LSU coach Les Miles attended an event in honor of then-Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential campaign in 2015 and celebrated at Jindal’s re-election victory party in 2011.

There's also the obvious.  

To generate excitement for LSU, Long’s first step was to quadruple the size of the marching band (from 28 to 125) and develop a first-rate football team. He became the state’s most prominent ‘Tiger fan’ – coaching plays, giving locker room pep talks and personally recruiting top talent for the team. LSU fever swept the state, as reduced tuition and need-based scholarships allowed students from all regions to flock to Baton Rouge to study. 

We could go on and on about Huey, in fact.  His impact on the band alone is legendary.  T. Harry Williams devotes a chapter to Huey and LSU titled "I've Got  A University" emphasizing Long's sense of ownership over the school, the football team, and everything else there.  Also there is this quote from Glenn Jeansonne's less good book, Huey Long: A Political Contradiction that seems to fit here.

Long hired the best football coaches money could buy and then told them how to run the team, although he had never played football himself. He housed gifted players in the Governor's Mansion, where he fattened them up on milkshakes and sirloin steaks.

 Milkshakes and steaks 2019.  Nobody wants to run against that. 

Serving the city

Source: The Data Center: "Who Lives In New Orleans Now?" 2018

Urban development policy in New Orleans is a confederation of schemes to enrich the few at the expense of the many and people are starting to catch on. It remains an open question, though, whether we're going to demand better of our political decision-makers or if we're going to continue accepting the same approach indefinitely as long as the hollow rhetoric supporting it is updated every once in a while to co-opt the political concerns of the moment.

In Monday's Advocate, we found a  pretty typical example of one such branding adjustment.  "New Orleans's incentives for developers aren't serving the city," says the headline.  That sounds true enough. Unfortunately, this is a story about what a consultant's report commissioned by the Landrieu Administration to evaluate those "incentives" has to say about them. What might such an outfit tell us needs to be done?  Well, of course, we have to make slight cosmetic changes to the process by which we award those same incentives to the same developers.  Problem solved.

Instead, the report — prepared by the national consulting firm HR&A Advisors — recommends that officials issue tax breaks or other subsidies, under four major incentive programs, to firms that earn high scores on a new scorecard aligned to city priorities.

“If you are building affordable housing in a high-opportunity neighborhood, you could get more points for that,” said Ellen Lee, the city’s director of community and economic development. “So you would ultimately get more subsidy.”

Great.  A "points" system. Look, regardless of whatever gimmick they decide to glom on to their let's-shovel-money-to-developers device, it is still, first and foremost, a plan to shovel money to developers. It is still substituting carrots where there should be sticks.

Developers also could get high scores for incorporating sustainable building practices or for exceeding the standards of the city's policies on local hiring, aiding disadvantaged business enterprises or paying "living wages."

Where there ought to be strict enforcement of mandatory environmental, equity and labor standards, there are "high scores" for incorporating and aiding but not necessarily always complying with such practices.  

For decades, municipal governments have overseen a trickle-down process by which public money is directed through various tax abatement programs to finance construction of private for-profit real estate development.  These special privileges are hilariously labeled "incentives" by the same free market fundamentalists who otherwise lecture us that government has no place in the natural and perfect resource allocation function of unfettered capitalism. In these cases, though, we are told that distorting the market with gifts to real estate oligarchs is really in the public interest.  For some reason we're told publicly financed kickbacks are the only way to save our most iconic buildings from "blight" or to put even the most valuable real estate in all of Louisiana "back into commerce."

It is only recently that this rationalization has expanded to include a sop to the affordable housing crisis. And even then, the reasoning is flimsy as hell.  Regardless of how many "points" a residential development accrues setting aside a token number of units that meet a dubiously defined threshold for affordability, the main thing we are doing is putting public investment into building nice things for rich people.

Construction has begun on the Odeon, a $106 million, 271-unit apartment building that will include 12,000 square feet of retail in the Central Business District, the project's developer said Monday.

Once complete, the 29-story building will be the latest addition to the half-billion-dollar South Market District, which has transformed an area between Loyola Avenue and Baronne Street once known for blight and parking lots into five blocks of boutique shops and high-end apartments and condominiums.

$69.5 million of the financing for the Odeon comes through a HUD backed FHA loan  arranged through, and ultimately to the benefit of Iberia Bank. It also benefits from a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) "incentive" agreement issued by the Industrial Development Board last year.  This is the latest high-end development in the section of the CBD re-branded "South Market District."



These projects are eligible for something like $3.5 million in tax credit financing thanks to state laws carried by now City Councilmember Helena Moreno and by State Rep Walt Leger.  The  development is adjacent to property held by the Landrieu family.  While it's true that all of this public investment, including the nearby Loyola Streetcar, has dramatically reshaped the look and feel of a downtown neighborhood, it's difficult to argue that the luxury condos, pied-a-terres, and Airbnb farms being constructed in that neighborhood have done much to make housing more affordable.



A few blocks downtown from South Market along the new streetcar line we find other examples of buildings put "back into commerce" after Katrina through federal grants, loans and tax credits that are being sold off to timeshare operators. 

 Earlier this year, the council approved zoning changes for the CBD that will make it easier for timeshare companies to operate in most areas. The City Planning Commission’s staff backed the move, arguing in a report that a timeshare “does not possess any more unique characteristics as compared to a hotel, hostel or commercial short-term rental,” which are all permitted uses in the affected CBD areas.

Now, the owners of other CBD buildings are already marketing their properties to suit this new option. Several buildings, including New Orleans’ oldest "skyscraper," the 11-story Maritime building at 800 Common St., which has 105 apartments, and the Saratoga building at 212 Loyola Ave., with its 155 apartments, could potentially follow suit, according to real estate experts.

Both buildings were recently brought back into commerce by their owner, architect and developer Marcel Wisznia. The Maritime building was renovated in 2010 at a cost of $38.8 million, and the Saratoga a year later at a cost of $41.8 million. Both renovations benefited from federal and state historic tax credits and, in the Maritime’s case, new markets tax credits, which promote investment in low-income areas. Both properties also have mortgages insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Last year, Wisznia came under fire from a local housing rights group for converting many of the units into short-term rentals, which it claimed violated federal rules.

In 2009, I happened to snap a picture of a this mural on the side of one of those buildings.  Needless to say it is no longer there today.




"Incentives for developers aren't serving the city."  The consultants got that much right.  But their report isn't here to condemn the practices that have served us so ill. Instead they ask only that we adjust their "alignment." The objection is not philosophical. It is merely technical.  Read past the nonsense about point systems, ignore the song and dance about altruistic goals and the report basically boils down to one core recommendation:  Do fewer PILOTs but more TIFs.

Tax Increment Financing is, like PILOT, a scheme by which tax revenue is redirected from the schools and roads and drainage it was meant for. All of these so-called incentive programs starve public services of their dedicated money in one way or another. In the case of a TIF, a portion of the taxes is  paid directly to the bank over a period of several years until a developer's loan is paid off.  Why the consultants think this is better is anybody's guess.

In any case, we aren't going to "serve the city" any better as long as we remain mired in an outmoded belief that critical public services are best financed through upward redistribution of public resources and delivered as byproducts of real estate projects that primarily benefit the wealthiest interests. Rearranging the tax credits on the deck of a sinking city is not going to solve our problems.

The "adults" are running out of time to do any adulting

It's already March.  Carnival season is over and it's time for media outlets across South Louisiana to fire up their clickbaity... okay, useful but still clickbaity... crawfish price index thingies.  WGNO's is the first one to come up in my google search result so I guess they are winning right now. Let's see what they've found.

The average for live crawfish is $3.12 per pound, while boiled is running $4.46 per pound, as of Thursday, Feb. 22.

Yeah, I think that's high too. Still, it's not as bad as I thought it might be given the freeze last month.  But I'm no expert on aquaculture. I only know what I read in the papers.  And that says the freeze may delay production this year but it won't necessarily hurt it once things start rolling.  In any case, I'm hoping there's still enough available come early July. That is when we will need to have a big crawfish boil on the state capitol grounds. It will be fun way to pass the time during the shutdown.

With the special session just hours away, neither House Republicans nor Democrats had come to a clear agreement on whether it would successfully pass anything. Edwards has said that he doesn’t believe that the Legislature will pass a budget during the regular session that begins March 12, without an infusion of additional revenue because the cuts would be too drastic. That would force another special session after the regular session ends June 4. A budget must be approved by July 1 or there would be a state government shutdown.

The cycle should be familiar by now.  Thanks to a decade of gimmick budgets and costly tax giveaways to wealthy special interests, the state is broke.  Every year brings a new round of devastating cuts, primarily to health care and higher education.  Every year the legislative session ..and the accompanying special session(s).. features a mad scramble to plug a budget shortfall.  This is accomplished precariously through more gimmicks and cuts and temporary sales taxes nobody likes setting up another round of the same battles the following year. This is the year several of those compounded tricks and gimmicks come due as a number of revenue measures are set to sunset creating what has become commonly referred to as a "fiscal cliff."

While it's tempting to regard the absurd cycle with a fatalist sigh about political incompetence or pithy comments about our state's supposed backwardness, there's actually a more straightforward explanation. We have not arrived at the legislative impasse by accident. We are here as a result of deliberate strategy executed by the Republican leadership. If it continues to be successful, and there's little reason to believe it won't, we're more than likely headed for a shutdown in July. Which, again, is why it's a good idea to keep an eye on crawfish prices.

Less than a year into Barack Obama's first term as President, Mitch McConnell famously declared “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell may not have accomplished that goal. But there's a strong argument the Republican strategy for obstructing Obama's domestic agenda was largely a success. Most notably, Obama's signature achievement health care reform was watered down, delayed, and is now on the verge of unraveling thanks to Republican stubbornness. McConnell was even able to steal a Supreme Court nomination from Obama by sitting on his hands for months. There are numerous other examples but suffice to say the GOP #Resistance to Obama provides a model of how to effectively run an opposition party.  If the Democratic #Resistance movement manages to flip the Congress this year, it will be interesting to see if their party's leadership learns anything from it.

In the meantime, though, Louisiana Republicans understand the model quite well. It's been an open secret around Baton Rouge that their legislative strategy has prioritized limiting John Bel Edwards to one term as Governor above all other concerns. They've managed to resist progressive budgetary reforms for the past two years and are preparing to leverage the continuing crisis against Edwards during the next election.

Now that the next election is already beginning to take shape, the incentive to maintain the bugetary status quo has become even stronger. The current special session has been punctuated with cameo appearances by potential Republican gubernatorial candidates offering advice. On the day the session opened, Ralph Abraham gave a talk where he said he was against any "new taxes." This week, Steve Scalise said the problem has something to do with "the vestiges of Huey Long." John Kennedy said something stupid about art. Jeff Landry has been relatively quiet, but he's been dealing with a lot of things lately. Rest assured, he'll have something to say eventually.

For his part, the Governor has been doing some campaigning as well.  Last week he took some time during one of many extended House recesses to tell the St. Tammany Chamber he would be "as flexible as I can about how we fix the (fiscal) cliff." But added, "I will not be flexible about whether we fix it, because we have to." And that pretty much lays out the stakes of this session, politically.  The Governor needs to fix the cliff. The Republicans need him to fail. All of the breakdowns and antics we've seen during the session proceed from that conflict.

Republicans opened fiscal cliff negotiations (such as they have been) demanding a number of things that don't actually have anything to do with fixing the cliff. Mark Ballard describes some of them in this column. He also momentarily capitulates to the conceit that any of these is a "fiscal reform" but nevermind that for a sec.

A wrinkle is that Republicans have insisted that any tax bills that come out of their chamber include a rider that says the tax increase won’t go into effect unless one of their fiscal reform measures also passes.

These revamps — the so-called Ohio checkbook, a hard spending cap, and changes to Medicaid — provide political cover for those who were elected chanting “the state has spending problem, not a revenue problem.”

But the riders are kind of insulting to the age-old legislative process of people giving their word and keeping it, state Rep. Major Thibaut, D-New Roads, said when the first one was amended onto Dwight’s bill.

If the riders make it easier for House Republicans to vote for sales and income taxes, though, then James said he’s OK with them. “They’ll be stripped off when the adults get these bills in the Senate,” he added.

Some version of that "adults" comment shows up during every legislative session and it always makes me laugh.  It's true that the Senate can and often does undo some of the stupidest damage done in the House. But they've never been able to un-fuck the budget. And recently it seems their efforts are more and more likely to end in tears. This session, the "adults," haven't had an opportunity to do much of anything at all.  And time is running out so when or if they ever get around to fixing the House's mess, it might just prove too much to negotiate.

And make no mistake, wasting time is the primary purpose of the Republican bills.  The "Ohio Checkbook" Ballard refers to is just a website.

As president of LABI, Waguespack is paid to ensure that legislators prioritize tax cuts and exemptions for corporations above anything else, which is why, rather than confront the immediate crisis of a $1 billion shortfall, he is pitching a website that tracks government spending.

Never mind that Louisiana already has such a website; it’s too “clunky.” Ignore the fact that the non-partisan organization United States Public Interest Research Group ranks our state’s current website seventh in the entire country, praising “Louisiana as a ‘leading state’ in offering an easy-to-use website and providing data on an array of expenditures,” as Devon Sanders of LSU’s Manship News Service reported only two weeks ago in The Daily Advertiser.  And pay no attention to the fact that it will take years before it could even be operational. Louisiana Checkbook, we are told, will help us finally solve our budget woes by shining a brighter light on wasteful government spending.

As a "transparency" tool it is redundant.  As conservative propaganda it might serve some purpose... at the expense of Louisiana taxpayers, of course.  As for Medicaid reforms, there are two bills in play. One of them imposes more strict eligibility requirements. The other one... well, it turns out the other one doesn't actually do anything.

The Louisiana House voted 69-29 for legislation Friday (March 2) that was originally aimed at requiring some Medicaid recipients to work to receive their government health benefits, but that has been altered such that Medicaid recipients who refused to work couldn't actually lose their health care.

During committee debate Republicans continually insisted that their work requirement bill was not an attempt to deny health care to anyone. So Marcus Hunter (D-Monroe) called the bluff with an amendment that explicitly says no one can be separated from Medicaid for failing to meet the work requirements. The amendment passed and so here we are with a bill that doesn't do anything... besides cost money, of course. These "fiscal hawk" Republicans do seem to love their wasteful spending bills.

The reason we're still having to deal with any of this nonsense during a fiscal session is because the fate of those bills along with a measure to tighten the state spending cap were attached to the key revenue bills in committee by something Ted James (D-Baton Rouge) called the "Michael Jordan of amendments." 

But then came the “chain” amendment, shackling passage of Dwight’s bill to passage of seven others: HB 2, HB 3, HB 11, HB 12, HB 29, HCR 2, and HB 15. Those include work requirements for Medicaid, as well as co-pays and premium payments. In addition, the Speaker’s measures for lowering the state spending cap and for establishing the Louisiana checkbook must pass for Dwight’s bill to take effect: all or nothing.

Baton Rouge Representative Ted James began laughing, incredulously.

“This is amazing!” he said. “This is like the Michael Jordan of amendments! Dwight, are you okay with this amendment?”

Stephen Dwight's (R-Lake Charles) bill would "clean" four pennies of the existing sales tax which is to say it eliminates certain exclusions and exemptions. It also extends a quarter of the otherwise expiring fifth penny. The Democrats say they absolutely hate having to balance the budget with higher sales taxes because, as they correctly assert, the sales tax is the most regressive way the state can raise money. It overburdens the poor at the same time that the state tax code is full of special carve-outs and subsidies for global industrial corporations, movie production companies, and various other business"incentive" schemes of questionable benefit. Naturally, the House Republicans are fine with all of these giveaways.  It remains something of an open question whether they're even going to list them on their spending "transparency" website. In any case there's a lot of revenue potential left on the table while the legislators argue over pennies.

This is one reason the Black Caucus has drawn a line in the sand demanding at least some sort of income tax adjustment. 

The House Black Caucus, which holds most of the House Democratic votes, told Barras Monday morning that its members would only vote to keep a higher sales tax rate in place for three more years if a measure to raise income taxes passes as well.

The Republicans don't like voting for any taxes, but find a sales tax hike less offensive than other options. The Black Caucus said sales tax increases are harder on poor people, and its members would prefer an income tax increase. 

The only bill that does anything with income taxes was filed by Walt Leger.  House Bill 8 would reduce the amount in federal itemized deductions Louisiana taxpayers could take on their state returns. So it's technically not really an income tax increase. But it is a slightly more progressive means of raising revenue than the sales tax.  It's the closest anything will come to meeting the Black Caucus's demand, anyway.

But Leger's income tax bill also has a "Michael Jordan amendment" attached.  This is thanks to the efforts of Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) who has been doing his best to submarine both the sales tax and income tax bills and therefore the entire session.

Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, said he also heard a deal had been struck, "but I'm not part of it."

"I'm going to object (to the income tax bill) and make people vote and note those who take a walk," Seabaugh said. "There's no way I'm letting that bill out without a vote, and anybody that does vote for it is likely to find themselves voted out in the next election."

Seabuagh also managed to irk Democrats by adding yet another sunset provision to the sales tax bill and by calling the Governor a "bald-faced liar" from the House floor.  Reporters were saying that Edwards asked to meet with Seabaugh in his office afterwards but that meeting never happened. Donald Trump is considering Seabaugh for a federal judgeship.

Given all of this, it's no surprise House members spent "Do or Die Friday" not doing a whole lot. They gaveled in late and almost immediately gaveled out for meetings.  The meetings were not very productive so they went to lunch. They tried to pass Leger's bill but that darn Michael Jordan amendment took to blocking some shots. They met with the Governor. They huddled. They mini-huddled.  They walked in and out of the room. Some of them even managed to vote from outside of the room. 

Members are only supposed to vote for themselves according to House rules, but Henry's vote on the income tax deduction changes was recorded, even though he was absent all day. Present or not, Henry has said he won't be voting for any tax bills this session so his vote wouldn't help get the vote passed.

Eventually they decided they weren't getting anything done so they will have to try again on Sunday.
They'd better get this mess over to the Senate by then. Otherwise the "Adults" might never get a chance to fix it.

Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, said the Senate won't be able to accept tax bills after Sunday night and get them legally through the full legislative process before the Legislature's session ends Wednesday.

There's very little reason to expect that they will make that deadline. As anyone who has been paying attention will tell you, fixing the mess isn't what any of this is all about. Barry Ivey has been paying attention.

Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, said some of his colleagues have been driven by politics and the goal of preventing Edwards from being a successful governor. (An assertion that Harris later rejected.)

"We don’t want a Democrat to get re-elected, and we don’t want to give him a political win by doing tax reform – that was something that was told to me,” Ivey said. "We've placed politics ahead of our constituents. We should all be ashamed. Myself included.”

That's been the strategy since Day One of the Edwards Administration and there's little reason to  believe the Republican leadership is going to deviate from it now that the next election year is so near up on us.  In other words, we have every reason to believe we're headed for a big posturing government shutdown come July.  We're gonna need a lot of crawfish.

Oh yeah I totally could have won....

LOL Walt Leger.

But Tuesday, a day before qualifying starts, Leger emailed supporters to say he would not be running.

"The decision was not an easy one, mostly because it presented such an amazing opportunity to serve this great city, but also because I am certain a path to victory was clear," Leger said. "However, my public service has never been about titles or jumping to the next best thing. Rather, I remain focused on working hard, studying issues, and relentlessly pursuing policy initiatives in a professional, reasonable and bipartisan manner."

It was clear that I would have whipped everybody. But that just didn't seem very nice so, enjoy being mayor, then, whoever.  Ok, Walt. Anyway, we knew Walt was out the same week Desiree got in. But it's been fun.

Meanwhile... is that Troy Henry's music? 

Troy Henry, the business consultant who in the 2010 New Orleans mayor’s race finished a distant second to Mayor Mitch Landrieu, said Tuesday that he is pondering jumping into this year’s mayoral fray.

His consideration of a second run is fueled by a desire to solve city ills such as violent crime, unequal opportunities for residents and gentrification, he said in a prepared statement.

“We can't continue going from one administration to the next with the same problems that continue to plague every Mayor and Council,” Henry said. “Something different has to happen to benefit the citizens not just in talk or political rhetoric, but in REALITY!”

Hey look it's a business guy who makes loud, self-aggrandizing statements in all caps with exclamation points.  That' new.

You may also remember Mr. Henry from such political follies as:

Going to the mat in favor of corporal punishment at St. Aug.


Having also been employed by a company attempting to privatize water systems in New Orleans and in Atlanta... but also lying about his specific role with that company.  

Having been at Enron during an interesting time.

After a dozen years with IBM, Henry was recruited to help launch an energy-services branch at Enron. He moved his family back to New Orleans while he commuted to Houston.

As vice president for North American operations, Henry recalled putting in long hours to take "a business that was floundering and give it some direction." But in mid-2001, Henry said he was startled to see an earnings report that appeared inflated.

Henry said he was told by superiors that Enron simply was engaging in aggressive bookkeeping with its accounting firm's blessing. He left the company on Sept. 7, 2001, just as revelations began to emerge of a massive accounting fraud that led to Enron's collapse in one of the largest corporate scandals in U.S. history.

Having had his 2010 campaign basically ended by one rebuke from Sybil Morial.  

So, yeah, he should be fun to have around this fall. Anyone with a chip on his shoulder this big fits right in with the current zeitgeist.

He might also appeal to voters who are fed up with the current slate of long-time politicians and want an outsider to shake things up -- a profile Henry appeared to be cultivating in his statement Tuesday.

“I have been successful without the politics, despite being unfavorably treated by the current administration and the power structure of the city,” he said.

So what do we reckon that was all about?

Last week we learned that KCP was suddenly "very seriously" considering getting into the mayoral race. She took the holiday to think it over. And then, just as suddenly, she wasn't so serious about it anymore.   What was that all about? It's possible that she just wanted to take one last look at her prospects one week before qualifying. These political types do like to have their egos stretched as often as possible.

But the timing here was a bit weird. Even the idea was strange. Not that KCP couldn't have been a strong contender,  but jumping into the race at this point would have landed her squarely on the toes of her "dear friend" and presumptive front runner, LaToya.  Why would she do that?

This morning WDSU reported on a pair of polls one of which was conducted for the Cantrell campaign. Peterson's name does not appear in the results.

In the Cantrell poll, 600 people from various backgrounds were polled. If the elections were held today, here's how things would break down:

Cantrell has 23 percent, Charbonnet is at 14 percent, businessman Sidney Torres received 13 percent, Bagneris is at 8 percent and New Orleans-based state Rep. Walt Leger is at 6 percent.

Notice neither Torres nor Leger is an announced candidate. Was this poll question open ended or were respondents provided a list of names to choose from? If it was the latter, why were Leger and Torres included but not Peterson?

Was KCP ever really serious about running? Or was she putting her name in the mix temporarily for some other purpose? We may never know the point of this exercise but it sure  was odd.  Meanwhile,  there's still plenty room for someone else to jump in. We realky could use a few more candidates here. But there's only a week left to find them.

By the way, the good news for KCP is her hypothetical campaign qualified her to participate in the first edition of Wheel Of Mayors which debuted during the second hiur of this week's Hunkerdowncast. You can catch that here, btw.

Groundhog Day

So let's see. You may recognize this scenario.  It's the last day of legislative session in Louisiana and the House is in chaos. Months of committee hearings, floor votes, conference deals, and late night negotiations have come down to a last minute scramble over the state budget. The budget has to pass or else everyone has to come right back in special session and start all over.

The latest version with Senate revisions is in. The task is nearly complete and everybody really wants to go home but things are bogging down because the Republican leadership is cranky.  Unwilling to bend on the last $50 million compromise, the bill's author is refusing to bring it to the floor for a vote.

State Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, was the sponsor of the main budget bill and disagreed with the version of the spending plan Edwards and the Senate supported. The governor and senators had proposed allocating all of the money available to state agencies and government, but asking those entities to reserve a total of $50 million in case of a budget shortfall.

Henry was pushing to make $100 million worth of cuts to the state budget upfront. He wanted to use that $100 million to cover any midyear budget shortfall that might come up. Edwards and the Senate would not agree to that plan.

"I don't know that there is much more I can do to prevent us from coming back here," Henry told the House. "I am looking forward to the day when I can miss all of you. We are not there today unfortunately."

Everything comes down to a race against the clock as parliamentary whiz Walt Leger tries a series of maneuvers to call a vote without the cooperation of the bill's sponsor or the House Speaker. The clock runs out. Everyone feels bad.  The Governor comes out again with his sad face and sighs that he wishes everyone would just "grow up." Stephanie Grace calls him a "disappointed dad" again.

It all starts again from the beginning this weekend on Monday (because what's the hurry, really?) When do we get to the part where we finally break out of the loop?  Does it happen before or after we go off the "fiscal cliff"?

The tax plan rollout

Today was the day the Governor was supposed to detail his (somewhat) surprising proposal to replace the state tax on corporate income with a tax on gross receipts. They're pushing that back a few days now.  That's probably happening, at least in part, to get the legislators time to catch up.  You know there's a problem when even the literate ones are having trouble getting information.

Edwards' interest in gross receipts caught legislators and state budget experts off guard, particularly since it surfaced a couple of weeks ago, only a month before the legislative session is scheduled to start on April 10. By contrast, the income tax plan had been discussed in detail for about a year by the Edwards administration before it was scratched.

"I know very little about it," said Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, arguably the most influential member of the state legislature and one of the governor's strongest political allies, about gross receipts in an interview Friday afternoon.

"I haven't had a chance to review the ins and outs of it," said House Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, who carried much of the governor's tax package last year in a separate interview Friday. "It seems there are a lot of questions."  

"Even the people talking about it contradict each other and don't understand it. They haven't had enough time to digest it yet," said Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, the chairman of the Senate committee that oversees tax bills. 

My thought when I first read about the gross receipts plan was that they were doing an end run around corporate tax exemptions by wiping them all out in one fell swoop. Theoretically this would give everybody a chance to spend the session doing favors to friends by writing them back in to the new code.  Hopefully the end result would also be slightly more revenue but there's no guarantee that it would be. 

Borr-ing!

I don't mean Helena Moreno is a boring candidate. It's just boring that all of the set pieces in the 2017 municipal election diorama are arranging themselves exactly as everyone predicted they would.

It’s official: State Rep. Helena Moreno is running for an at-large seat on the New Orleans City Council.

Surrounded by dozens of supporters on the top floor of Basin Street Station on Thursday, Moreno confirmed her candidacy in the October election, one of the first major announcements of the city’s political season.

“I’ve really enjoyed working on state policy. I have,” said Moreno, a former television news anchor.

“But I’ve been listening to you, and I’ve heard you, and there’s more to do right here at home.”

She said she will seek the Division 1 at-large seat now held by Stacy Head, who is term-limited.

And then we get into the pro-forma discussion of "Who-is-White" and "Who-is-Black" and which At Large seat each is supposed to run for. It's a symptom of a lackluster political environment when everything is set up in advance before most voters are even paying attention.

I'm starting to worry about this with regard to the mayoral field as well.  Conventional wisdom currently holds that Jason Williams is out of the running there. And, although we hear often that JP Morrell and Walt Leger are considering it, they could both end up passing.  And assuming Torres is just faking everyone out for attention, that would leave us with, what? LaToya, Bagneris, and Troy Carter?  Jesus, why should anyone even bother?

One gets the impression Clancy DuBos may be just as bored. Because why else would he throw these names out? It can't possibly be because he's actually heard anything... can it?

Dubos also expects a wild card or two, possibly a well-known businessman -- the daughter and sister of former mayors -- and a sitting district attorney.

"Sidney Torres is a potential wild card," DuBos said. "So is Monique Morial. So is Leon Cannazzaro."(sic)

Leon for mayor is a pretty funny idea. Maybe we should do this. Cannizzaro can run for mayor. Williams can be DA. Mitch can run for Sheriff and Gusman can go be on the City Council.  Every 8-10 years, everybody just swaps departments. Every now and then somebody goes to jail, though. In which case that person has to sit out a few rounds until they get a radio show or something.

Anyway, the actual worry here is there is so much going on in the city of New Orleans right now that people at the grass roots level are worried about; inequality, lack of opportunity, a failing and corrupt school privatization scheme, a broken and brutal criminal justice system, an affordable housing crisis, and an official preference for serving the tourism industry at the expense of residents.

The establishment politicos currently shuffling from job to job barely care about any of these issues. Or, at least, when they do, they tend to interface with it from the point of view of the privileged classes in which they themselves circulate. We need a politics that responds directly to the people on the bottom.  It doesn't look like this round of local elections is going to give us that.

Newcomers (and oldcomers)

The headline to this Advocate article says "three newcomers" are running for City Council. But the term must be loosely interpreted when the so-called newcomers include Joe Giarrusso III,  scion of a well known political family, Eric Johnson, described as, "a former aide to Jim Singleton, a longtime leader of the BOLD organization" and Drew Ward who has been something of a political gadfly for the better part of a decade. In fact, Ward ran for council against Susan Guidry in 2014 in a campaign that will be remembered more for an unfortunate Twitter outburst than anything else.

This time around, Ward hopes to be remembered for a radical sounding idea.

Among other changes, he envisions a municipal assembly of 50 or more citizens that would have the final say on major decisions, rather than the mayor or the City Council. The council would still exist but only to draft proposals that the municipal group would approve or reject. Such a change could help eliminate corruption, he said.

Not likely to get that off the ground. But given the way high profile council meetings can devolve into shouty theater during public comment, maybe it would be fun to let more people shout from the other side of the dais for a while.

There's also some "will he or won't he" talk in there about Seth Bloom and Jay Banks but I think that's been mentioned previously.   The real big local political news this week concerns our latest run of our incredibly stupid and wildly unreliable Twitter poll of the mayor's race.

We began running these along with an early look at the mayoral field back in January. The methodology is this.  I put out a bunch of names in two separate twitter polls. (There are more candidates than can fit in one.)  Respondents are trusted to pick whichever of the eight they like although there is technically nothing stopping them from voting for one from each "heat."  This is obviously a terrible way to go about gathering data. So we're planning to do it all year.

The polls themselves are here. But I prefer to further muck things up by lumping the final results together in one big list as though this were a single ballot. This week, I think it might be fun to list each candidate in reverse order of the number of votes  received.

Michael Bagneris 1 vote (2%)

The judge hasn't been much in the news lately beyond just confirming that he is definitely running. So far the quiet campaign isn't doing much for his numbers in our fake poll. 

Jason Williams 3 votes (6%)

The Councilman-At-Large, to his great credit, was a vocal participant in a recent protest against Donald Trump's travel ban. 

Williams stood at the center of the rally as several speakers talked about their personal experiences with immigration policy and expressed solidarity with immigrants worldwide before it was his turn to speak.

“I’m here because many of your demands were things that I have worked on and pushed with Chief Harrison and with the Congress of Day Laborers before Donald Trump was ever in office,” he said. “Now more than ever, I think it’s really clear we can see how rights can be eroded.”

Williams said even though the new administration has only been in office for a few days, Trump’s intentions to make the country more racist, xenophobic, and homophobic have already become clear.

“We are not going to allow him to push progress back,” Williams said of Trump. “I say to Donald Trump, I say to Mr. Bannon, not on my watch, not in my city, not in my country.”

Recently, though, the rumors tend to suggest that Williams is more interested in becoming D.A. than mayor.  If that's the case, he may skip out on the mayor's race and run At-Large again to bide his time.

Karen Carter Peterson 4 votes (8%)

Another candidacy of which the rumors are running colder as of late. KCP is busy in Baton Rouge this week which is a shame because she may not appear in any parades this weekend.  And Jeremy Alford writes that she's not ready to give up chairmanship of the state Democratic Party just yet and is in fact looking to move up in the national party structure.  That doesn't necessarily exclude her from the mayor's race but it does make it sound like she has other priorities.

Latoya(!) Cantrell 6 votes (13%)

Latoya and her (but not really her) billboard appear to be all in. This week, she's fielding ladder complaints. A couple of years ago, Cantrell convened a Mardi Gras task force that was supposed to solve the ladder problem.  It hasn't. 

Sidney Torres 6 votes (13%)

Sidney's been busy debuting TV shows and writing letters to the editor lately. No reason to believe he isn't seriously considering getting in the race if the field shakes out favorably for him.

Walt Leger 6 votes (13%)

Like everyone else here, Walt is dropping hints.

Leger said Monday evening that he was not going to run for State Treasurer but had “another” race in mind. Like State Sen. J.P. Morrell, also a prospective candidate, Leger is focused on the upcoming special legislative session.  

In the meantime, he'll probably be too busy in Baton Rouge to comment further. Same goes for... 

JP Morrell 7 votes (15%)

Do you ever check out JP's podcast? It's pretty interesting.  Last week, during a talk with WWLTV crime analyst Jeff Asher about, well, a bunch of things, Morrell floated the idea of an elected Chief Of Police. Now that is a fascinating prospect.  Can't even imagine how many bad Twitter polls we'd have to take to figure that out.

"Matt" 13 votes (28%)

Well now this is a surprise, right? You see there was this guy at the MaCCNO meeting I attended last week named Matt. He introduced himself to the group, "Hi I'm Matt and I'm actually running for mayor."  Didn't give his last name. That seems like a mistake. He went on to talk about "community policing" for a few minutes. Anyway, I have almost no idea who he is but I threw him in the poll for kicks.  Consider his frontrunner status an indication of just how wide open the field is at this point.

Not polled in this round: State Senator Troy Carter, who appears to be telling people he is running. Also outgoing US Attorney Ken Polite is said to be interested. We'll throw them in the next poll if there's room.

Only seven more months until qualifying day

There's no rest for New Orleanians weary of politics in 2017. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a quiet year. But as it happens folks will need to keep their voting arms good and warm for a full round of municipal elections happening this fall.

The scheduling change was enacted a few years back in an effort to move the elections away from the busy winter/spring social season. This is probably for the best. But, since we aren't moving inauguration day until the following cycle, we do end up with a weird little one-time quirk.

The swearing-in switch would be delayed until after June 1, 2018, a political compromise that lets Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the current council serve full, four-year terms through May 2018 regardless of the vote's outcome. But that also means the next round of city leaders, if elected in October 2017, would have to wait more than six months to take office.

The first January inauguration would take place in 2022.

So, after the November run-off, we're going to go through an awkward transition where we have a newly elected government just kind of hanging around in the background all the way into May. Ray Nagin used to complain about the "shadow government" in this city but this takes things a bit literally. Imagine a local version of the uncomfortable dual Presidency we've been enduring for the past month and a half but extended for half a year. Should be fun.

That's just about the same amount of time, by the way, between now and the July deadline for candidates to qualify for these races.  So, sure, let's start trying to figure out who is running for mayor.

We're pretty sure LaToya Cantrell is in.  She was most recently spotted delivering this demagogic over-the-top praise of the city's latest installation of surveillance cameras.

The department won’t specify where the cameras will be located, but said they would be stationed first in high-traffic areas and crime hot spots.

“Crime is out of control, shootings are up,” said Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell. “We need to be proactive in terms of catching criminals and deterring crime.”

Cantrell stresses that the readers are not for profiling or harassing people on the street, but for tracking vehicles used in crimes.

“It has nothing to do with profiling at all,” she said. “It doesn’t show you who’s in the vehicle, what they’re wearing, their skin color. It’s totally focused on that license plate as well as the make and model of the car.”

Cantrell said it will be a tool in the crime-fighting arsenal that the city so badly needs.

“My constituents are saying that crime is their number one issue. They not only want to feel safe, they want to be safe.”

Never mind the confused bit about racial profiling. That is, of course, always a concern. But it isn't the primary complaint against panoptic tracking of everyone's public movements by the police which we probably shouldn't have to point out is just inherently bad.   But it's that "My constituents not only want to feel safe, they want to be safe," comment that really floors me.  LaToya clearly doesn't recognize these cameras as the quintessential example of  ineffective, expensive security theater that they are. In fact, she seems to be describing them as precisely the opposite of that. This is worrisome.

We also know Michael Bagneris is in although nobody can figure out, exactly, why.  Back in October, Bagneris told Danae Columbus that running for mayor "is in my DNA." Medical science has not yet developed a treatment for this condition. 

J.P. Morrell might run. He was a vocal opponent of City Council's disastrous decision to legalize short term rentals last year. Affordable housing figures to be a major issue in these elections.  Morrell also recently held a high profile fundraiser at the home of wealthy trash magnate Jimmie Woods which could signal big plans.

Speaking of wealthy trash magnates.  This guy exists.

"One of the reasons I like private [solutions] is because I am looking at my bottom line," he said. "I'm not looking at what's politically correct. I'm not looking at what makes sense in how I am going to get to my next office or who's going to vote for me so I can keep my job as a politician."

Coincidentally, Landrieu's term ends in 2018, and Torres is said to be considering a run of his own. Until that decision is made official, "Trashanova" is returning to the trade that first proved profitable. With the noncompete clause from selling his waste business in 2011 expiring in June, Torres is launching a new waste-management company, IV Waste, slated to begin serving private customers in early August.


"Business leaders should get involved — not just financially involved, but get their hands dirty and find a cause to help out," he said. "I think it's important."

At first glance, Torres would appear to have at least two things working against him.  First, the local political memory still retains at least some of the lessons it learned from its last experience with putting a not-a-politician "business leader" in charge of stuff. Second, it's not clear that New Orleans voters really take Sidney all that seriously. He won "Best Potential Candidate For New Orleans Mayor" in the most recent Gambit "Best Of New Orleans" poll which most readers took to be something of a joke. Sidney took out a full page ad to thank them anyway.



At the same time, there's this annoying familiar feeling in the back of our minds here. Something about a wealthy, charismatic entrepreneur/reality TV guy who nobody took seriously until it was too late.  Can't quite place it, though. It's probably nothing.

Jason Williams is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate. This is mostly on the strength of the impressive victory by which he was elected Councilman At-Large in 2014.  In that seat, though, he's possibly dampened enthusiasm a bit. Councilman Williams often seems cautious to a fault.

When he ran, Williams was emphatic about his belief in the council's role as "a check and balance on the administration."  "It's not supposed be a rubber stamp," he said. And yet, during the STR debate, Williams proved to be among the more gullible followers of the administration's party line. Williams parroted the prevailing argument about the overwhelming imperative to "appease the platforms" insisting that we could always go back and "tweak" the permissive ordinance later.  Hilariously, at that very same time, Williams' Facebook page featured an obviously hollow statement of support for the DAPL protesters.

Right now "part of" Jason Williams is in Standing Rock asking if they can tweak the pipeline back out later maybe. pic.twitter.com/06mmu1G7KA

— skooks (@skooks) December 1, 2016

State Rep. Walt Leger has certainly sounded at times like he might be running. That shouldn't be too surprising given that things didn't go as he'd hoped in Baton Rouge last year.  He's also not the only member of our local delegation who might be fed up with the situation up there. Karen Carter-Peterson, for example, may have had quite enough of that cake already. There's also State Rep. Helena Moreno who, though her name has popped up regarding the mayor's race, is more likely to run for Stacy Head's Council At-Large seat.

Is that everybody?  Probably not. Clancy DuBos also mentioned Troy Carter and Nadine Ramsey during a recent TV blurb. We'll see about that.  There's also this guy @LarryLarmeu from Twitter who has threatened to run for various offices every few months or so for years now. Larry now says he is moving to England. We'll see about that too, I guess.

What we really need now, though, is polling data. It's never too early. This has been frustratingly difficult to come by in recent local elections.  So this year we're not waiting around for UNO or SMOR to throw out their one anti-climactic survey a week before the election. Instead we're making our own.  Poorly, of course, but so what. What is our method? Well, we just threw a bunch of names into a Twitter poll. There were... um...  problems with this.

First off, Twitter only allows you to create polls with four options.  But, as you can see from all of the above, we've identified quite a few more potential candidates than that.  So we had to put them into two separate groupings. The names appeared in these groups randomly in the order that I happened to think of them.  As it happened, the first grouping received almost 20 more total votes than did the second. Does this make the second group the "kiddie table"? Maybe. Is this in any way fair or valid? Hell no. That's not really our purpose here today or ever, really.

Suffice to say, even for a Twitter poll, the methodology here is highly suspect and pretty stupid generally.  So we're looking forward to doing more of these periodically at least until qualifying day. Anyway here are the results. You can click here to see the groupings. Or, if you like, I've tallied up the total number of votes for every candidate along with each candidate's percentage of the 126 total votes cast. And so, here is your very first, very blurry snapshot of the 2017 race for Mayor of New Orleans.

J.P. Morrell  19%  (24 votes)

LaToya Cantrell  17% (22 votes)

Larry Larmeu 15% (19 votes)

Jason Williams 14% (18 votes)

Karen Carter-Peterson 11% (14 votes)

Sidney Torres 9% (11 votes)

Walt Leger 8% (10 votes)

Michael Bagneris  6% (8 votes)

The big takeaway here, I guess, is that things are pretty tight at this early stage!  And, hey, look at all those votes that suddenly become available once Larry leaves the country.  Anybody's game, right?