New Orleans City Council Budget Chairman Joe Giarrusso III announced on June 13 that the council is directing the Sewerage & Water Board to hire an outside firm to handle billing until the agency can get a new smart meter reader system in place. That’s a smart — and timely — move.
The S&WB hasn’t credibly billed its customers for years. The council’s directive also is long overdue — not by the council, whose job is writing, not executing, public policy. The fault here lies with Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who is the board’s presiding officer.
The mayor has failed for years to push for this and other fixes to the S&WB’s billing system. Instead, as Gambit first reported more than a month ago, she appears more interested in attending photo ops and spending nearly a third of her time out of town.
Cantrell’s lack of interest in managing the city is well documented — and it has real consequences. In the absence of leadership by the mayor, the council finds itself in the legally awkward position of having to do the mayor’s job for her.
That’s an imperfect way to run a city, to say the least. The City Charter and the separation of powers clause limit the council’s authority to writing ordinances and controlling the city’s purse strings. Executing public policy and spending tax dollars are the domain of the executive branch.
Even a highly functioning administration — one that pays city bills on time, implements and enforces city policies effectively and fairly, and makes infrastructure repairs in a timely manner — would struggle without a fully engaged mayor. Cantrell’s administration is the opposite of highly functioning. The only thing it has excelled at is failure to perform even basic services, especially since Cantrell’s reelection in 2021.
That leaves City Hall’s hardworking, dedicated civil servants — who too often bear the brunt of the public’s anger — without competent, equally dedicated leadership. That, in turn, feeds a vicious cycle of more failures and increased public anger.
There’s ample empirical evidence to back that up. Pollster Silas Lee, a professor of sociology at Xavier who has conducted hundreds of local and national polls, recently completed a survey for Verité News that showed only 33% of New Orleans voters approve of Cantrell’s performance, compared with 55% who strongly or somewhat disapprove. The council, on the other hand, enjoys a more positive rating — 45% approval, 34% disapproval.
As far as voters are concerned, the council is justified in stepping up as the mayor steps out. There seems to be no realistic expectation that things will get measurably better before the next mayor takes office in January 2026. They could actually get worse.
We can only hope that the council will continue to find ways, within the constitutional limits on its authority, to guide the city through the next 18 months. This is especially true for any council members, state lawmakers and others who may be measuring the drapes in the mayor’s office.
Voters will be watching. So will we.
The state's non-stop assault on New Orleans’ right to self-governance has been met with an equally disturbing non-response from Mayor LaToya Cantrell.