“That parish.”
That’s how Gov. Jeff Landry New Orleans this week, as if it pained him to say its name, even though he’d just said it seconds before. As if Orleans is indistinguishable from the other 63 parishes, which was of course the point of his tirade.
“The state of Louisiana is tired. New Orleans thinks they’re so special,” Landry said. “That parish is going to operate exactly like the rest of this state. And the people of this state want that.”
Well, no disrespect to the rest of our fair state, but … seriously?
Yes, every parish is unique and has residents who defend it fiercely, and many of them are seeing new economic development projects.
Yet it’s New Orleans — which shares its boundaries with Orleans Parish — that’s iconic. It’s one of one, not only a cultural hothouse but a driver of a state economy that very much relies on the city’s charms to attract visitors and investment alike.
“A unique town in the United States, not like any other town,” who’s been some places, said recently. “Irreplaceable,” according to the . You get the idea.
So why does Landry say he doesn’t? Well, it’s worth stopping here for a moment to talk about what prompted Landry to go off.
improbably, when he backed the Legislature’s elimination of the city’s clerk of Criminal District Court. New Orleans, as Landry pointed out in his diatribe, has separate civil and criminal courts, and until recently, corresponding clerks. Whether that’s a good idea is a reasonable question, but it was indisputably unreasonable to fold one clerk’s job into another just as the man who’d been elected to a four-year term was about to be sworn in.
Next came a City Council vote, with the support of Mayor Helena Moreno and District Attorney Jason Williams, to say there should be an election to fill the newly created office. Then Attorney General Liz Murrill threatened to remove them all from office and have Landry appoint their replacements. Then Moreno posted a video highlighting a state law against threatening public officials.
Then came the strangest turn: A grand jury — on its own, we’re told, with Williams recused and Moreno saying she was in the dark — indicted Murrill for allegedly violating that law.
So now here we are, with Murrill’s allies spitting mad and taking it out on the whole city.
After Moreno pulled an application for a major bond issue from the state Bond Commission, Landry suggested that the city had been planning to use the state as an as if permission to borrow is the same as a handout.
At the announcement of a big expansion of in rural Richland Parish, the governor took the opportunity to link that project to the city’s supposed diminished importance to the state.
But as Landry’s public speeches tend to, this one veered way off point.
He said the city used to have four assessors. It was seven, but voters consolidated them in a post-Katrina civic-minded drive that also included reforms at the local levee board that Landry and his cronies have been busy dismantling.
He complained that the sheriff is elected at a different time than other sheriffs. To which I say: Please show me the north h resident who loses sleep over New Orleans’ election calendar.
And the governor said he wouldn’t meet with Moreno to talk until the city understands that it needs to get its fiscal house in order. Moreno has spent her first six months in office focusing on . She’s made deep cuts, sought out extra revenue and even invited the state legislative auditor to embed at City Hall.
And then there’s all the stuff Landry didn’t bring up.
Like that New Orleans has its own big economic projects in the works, from a to service today’s giant container ships and the long-awaited redevelopment of the old
Like that a governor only gets to preside over Super Bowls and Final Fours if they come to New Orleans. The NFL and NCAA certainly aren’t looking to hold signature events anywhere else in h.
Like Landry’s own record of investing in the city, sending the in to help fight crime and launching a successful drive to fix before last year’s Super Bowl.
“No one has done more for the city of New Orleans than me!” he claimed in a recent
I’m not sure that’s the case, but he’s actually done plenty.
Surely that’s because he understands that New Orleans is indeed special, no matter what he says when the cameras are rolling.