With an upcoming budget amendment, New Orleans City Councilmembers plan to send an additional $10 million to NOLA Public Schools, supporting the cash-strapped school district and honoring a purported November settlement torpedoed by Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
All seven council members have signed on to the ordinance, which is expected to be formally approved at the next council meeting on April 10.
Its approval, as an amendment to the city’s 2025 budget, would set up a $10 million payment to the Orleans Parish School Board, on the heels of a $10 million payment ordered by a court last month, for a total of $20 million.
The $20 million cash infusion was first proposed in November, in an agreement that never became legally binding because the mayor refused to sign it. Now, the council is back to square one in its effort to support schools.
The City Council wants to fulfill the promises it made, Councilman Joe Giarrusso said. “We feel as though we have a deal with the school board on a settlement. The deal included a second $10 million,” he said on Monday. “The (budget) amendment is being filed to honor the deal.”
The move seems likely to face a challenge from Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who pushed back on the proposed November agreement because she didn’t believe that the city budget could shoulder the costs, she said.
Settlement announced in November
Late last fall, after NOLA Public School found itself in a sudden, $36 million financial crisis due to a budget-projection error, council members stepped up to provide the district with a desperately needed cash infusion.
The proposed settlement was also a plus for the city, council members said, because it would have resolved a lawsuit that OPSB filed in 2019, alleging that the city illegally skimmed off the top of property-tax money that voters had designated to schools. It’s become clear in recent months that city administrations have charged a fee for 40 years, dating back to the Dutch Morial administration, with the city taking more than $120 million over time, school board members claim.
At this point, the standoff between the council and the mayor is about the cash part of the November plan. But the proposed settlement also included an additional $70 million in school funding, promised over the next decade. Securing that funding is next on the council’s list, Giarrusso noted – “We’re not done,” he said.
Still left unaddressed is the biggest, most costly, part of the settlement – a promise from the city to stop taking a fee off the top of property-tax payments to schools.
Cantrell objected to the entire settlement in late January, saying that the city could not continue to provide basic services if it went through with the agreement. She could put on the brakes, she maintained, because she had not signed the agreement – even though her right-hand man, Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño, stood with OPSB board members and city council members at the press conference in November and delivered remarks on behalf of the administration.
After Cantrell raised her objections, OPSB filed suit against the city. Council members ordered Montaño to appear at a special hearing on the topic where they suggested that the mayor had either failed to read the budget that she’d approved or that Montaño had acted beyond his authority in supporting the agreement.
At the hearing, the council voted to join the School Board in its lawsuit.
But soon afterward, Civil District Court Judge Nicole Sheppard agreed with Cantrell, finding that the mayor had indeed not signed the agreement, though many drafts of proposed settlement terms had circulated through city, council and district officials.
Sheppard did order Cantrell to pay the first $10 million installment — because it was specifically outlined in the 2025 budget that the mayor approved.
It’s unclear if that first payment has been made. The City Council’s proposed ordinance would facilitate a second $10 million payment.
Councilmembers believe that the city has enough money to pay
Councilmembers said that they did not share Cantrell’s dire view of the city’s budget. And by law, the City Council holds the purse strings in Orleans Parish. Though the executive branch – the mayor and her administration – sets priorities, prepares the budget and submits it to the council for approval before each new fiscal year, it is the City Council that amends the budget as needed and then adopts the budget. “You have the appropriating body (the council) and the executive doesn’t want to fund it,” Giarrusso said.
Once the ordinance is passed, the mayor has decisions to make. She could veto the ordinance, withholding the council’s $10 million, if she wants to maintain her position that the city is facing a financial crisis.
The mayor did not respond to questions from The Lens about the amendment; her communications team said only that she was unable to comment on the OPSB-council lawsuit.
If the mayor opts to veto the ordinance, the council would likely make its move, by overriding the veto – which requires a supermajority, 5-2 vote – and moving forward the payments promised to OPSB more than four months ago.