Standing on the second floor of the Acme Oyster House alongside BP America President Lamar McKay, Gov. Bobby Jindal today announced that the state will use $140 million from BP to transform sand berms into barrier islands to protect the coast.
Five months after The Lens first reported on nearly $17 million missing from the city’s largest economic-development fund, Mayor Mitch Landrieu still can’t account for the missing taxpayer dollars.
Fresh off a financing fight that still leaves the city without the full services to round up stray animals and address related problems, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s budget calls for further cuts to the contract that puts private dogcatchers on the street.
Galilee Housing Initiative and Community Development Corporation has failed to renovate even one of the more than 70 properties given to it by the city.
City Council leaders gave a cool reception Wednesday to Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s plan to finance an economic development office within City Hall as well as the new Nola Business Alliance, a separate nonprofit entity funded with a mix of public and private dollars to generate jobs and investment in New Orleans.
A month ago I griped about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s preternatural luck. Louisiana’s “part time governor,” as I called him, had radically scaled down his dubious sand-berm idea without any negative political fallout. All summer Jindal had touted the berms as being key to winning the “war” against oil in the Gulf. Then he retreated, scaling down the plan, and neither the media nor the public turned on him.
The judges in Criminal District Court have met this morning and voted to shut down the courthouse if Sheriff Marlin Gusman pulls his security at noon, as they are expecting, a spokeswoman said.
Though presenters at the second day of City Council budget hearings enthusiastically outlined their funding requests for city programs aimed at children and families, most council members said the time – and the budget – isn’t right to begin new projects and urged them to find money elsewhere.
