As state officials ratified Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to transfer $30 million from myriad local projects to a new steel and iron factory in St. James Parish, New Orleans legislators joined their colleagues statewide in a simple chorus: We were bamboozled.
A New Orleans food cooperative building a grocery store on St. Claude Avenue is among the many projects statewide that stand to lose money as the state shifts funds to a North Carolina steelmaker’s new St. James Parish operation.
The New Orleans Food Cooperative got $375,000 in the capital outlay budget signed by Gov. Jindal in July. But now the Jindal administration wants to steer $30 million in state outlay funds to Nucor because the company says the subsidy is needed for it to build a new iron factory in St. James Parish – and the grocery store is one of dozens of projects getting axed as state officials juggle the numbers.
New Orleans was awarded a $2 million federal grant today to study revitalizing Claiborne Avenue, including possibilities for removing a portion of the elevated Interstate 10 expressway.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans will provide the public with information on where recipients of Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers live, HANO chief David Gilmore said today.
Despite spending millions to tear down public housing complexes and to implement a voucher program that would end the concentration of poor households, a Housing Authority of New Orleans official admitted Monday that the agency doesn’t analyze voucher use to determine whether new pockets of poverty may be forming elsewhere.
