Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration is once again turning its attention toward the activities of small vendors and pop-ups — and once again has made life more difficult for small businesses and residents.
The latest regulatory enforcement effort threatens to kill the city’s vibrant art market scene. It follows previous attempts by the Cantrell administration to target micro-businesses at neighborhood second lines, at various places along St. Claude Avenue and in other parts of the city.
As Gambit’s Kaylee Poche reports this week, the administration recently began enforcing an obscure 1956 city ordinance related to special event permits and sales taxes. The ordinance requires organizers of events that include vendors to obtain large bonds to cover potential sales taxes owed to the city.
It’s unclear how consistently, or against whom, the ordinance was ever enforced. A community market operator who’d been organizing markets since 2007 told Gambit she’d never had to obtain the costly bonds before.
But this spring, the Department of Revenue began demanding bonds for special events, and not just major events that typically feature vendors from outside the city.
Rather, the city began targeting small art markets which have long been a part of life in New Orleans, and which took off during the pandemic. The markets allowed local artists, food pop-ups and small vendors to survive, even as brick-and-mortar retailers were forced to close.
In recent weeks, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration has embarked on a series of regulatory crackdowns.
Since the pandemic, the markets became a lifeline for small vendors and a part of life for thousands of New Orleanians — including the mayor herself. She often documents her visits to markets on social media.
Why the city has decided to pursue this policy against small markets is a mystery. A Cantrell spokesperson wouldn’t tell Gambit why this is happening, but they did acknowledge that the city has no data suggesting local artists, vintage clothing vendors and artisanal cake makers are tax scofflaws.
Similarly, there’s no reason to believe the markets harm traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. In fact, there’s significant evidence to the contrary. The Freret Street Market, for example, played a major role in revitalizing that commercial corridor.
Now that market — and many others — may have to cease operating because of the bond requirement. Several market organizers are in a holding pattern now, while one has already shut down as a result of the city’s decision to enforce the antiquated ordinance.
Most markets operate on shoe-string budgets, and nobody is getting rich running them. Even the few hundred dollars that market organizers must pay for a bond may be cost prohibitive — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of dollars in liability they face if they lose a bond because a vendor doesn’t pay sales tax on time.
The administration should cease this pointless and wholly unnecessary disruption of a thriving local economy. Failing that, the New Orleans City Council should step in and protect the local markets before it's too late.
Organizers of markets all over the city, including the popular Freret Market, say they are weighing if they can continue their markets.
We urge the new City Council to make permitting reform a priority next year and to ensure that all changes help small vendors.