How a fight over New Orleans' S&WB funding revealed Mayor LaToya Cantrell's waning power (2024)

As Mayor LaToya Cantrell publicly rebuked the idea that New Orleans should spend millions more local dollars to finish building a , other city leaders were working to make it happen anyway.

For weeks, Cantrell criticizeda plan backed by City Council members, state lawmakers and Gov. Jeff Landry to get the federal government to pay for half of the remaining $34 million cost and have local agencies cough up the rest. Instead, she pushed the State Legislature to throw in more cash.

Six years ago, opposition from the mayor of New Orleansmight have killed such a plan.

But that was before— before Cantrell came under a federal corruption probe now at least two years old and before she'd burned bridges with a slate of state lawmakers who represent her city. Back then, Cantrell scored political victories like maneuvering millions of tourism dollars towardsSewerage & Water Board projects.

Now things look different. Over the past few months, the mayor's repeated objections did nothing to stop the City Council from working hand-in-hand with Cantrell's top administrative officer, a Sewerage & Water Board lobbyist, state lawmakers and Landry to get their version of the power complex deal over the finish line.

In triumphant statements on Sept. 18, council members and state lawmakers claimed credit for clearing a final hurdle on one of the highest-priority infrastructure projects in a city saddled with cracked streets and broken drainage lines. Landry congratulated them for making it happen.

Meanwhile, Cantrell chief administrative officer Gilbert Montaño reversed course that afternoon on remarks the mayor made just hours prior, when she said it was “irresponsible” for the city to pour more cash into the project. In fact, Montaño said, the mayor supported the council’s plan and had directed him and others to help realize it.

The about-face did littleto salvage Cantrell’s political capital. Instead, the outcome underscored the mayor’s waning influence and political isolation as her tenure nears its end amid controversy.

“You don’t see the City Council doing end runs around the mayor like that,” said Ed Chervenak, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans and director of UNO’s Survey Research Center. “They’re stepping into a leadership vacuum.”

In an interview, a Cantrell spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the mayor hadn’t been a leader in talks over how to fully fund the power complex. Her staff said she spoke with the council, governor and business leaders during that process.

“The mayor has been in the lead, fully engaged, fully engaged with the governor,” Cantrell spokesperson Terry Davis said. “At the end of that, the mayor has been leading that and is not concerned with who is getting credit.”

But a dozen people involved in that planning, including City Council President Helena Moreno, who sources say will run for mayor in 2025 and has sparred with Cantrell previously over Sewerage & Water Board issues, described the mayor herself as playing little role in the outcome.

“Maybe she did not have a plan, but the council had a plan,” Moreno said.

Long saga

Long a politician known for doing things differently — to the frustration of critics and praise of admirers — Cantrell was riding a wave of goodwill six years ago, buoyed by her win in securing tourism dollars for key Sewerage & Water Board system upgrades, including the power complex, in a deal she called “fair share.”

At the time, even initial opposition by then-Gov. John Bel Edwards and the powerful tourism industry wasn’t enough to sink Cantrell’s designs on how to support the city embattled drainage, sewerage and water system.

But in the latest debate over how best to fund that agency’s needs — namely, $34 million needed for final-stage work on the $300 million complex, which offers a new power source for the board’s ancient drainage pumps and will help run its water system — her opinion carried far less weight.

That’s partly because Cantrell infuriated lawmakers this spring when she responded angrily to a new state law that will shift responsibility for the city’s catch basins to the Sewerage & Water Board. In perhaps another sign of the mayor’s diminished influence, that bill ultimately passed.

The conservative Landry, the state Legislature’s majority-Democratic New Orleans delegation and Republican leadership all initially agreed on the importance of sending $29 million from the state to the power complex — a rare point of bipartisan consensus in Louisiana’s polarized statehouse.

Their resolve crumbled after a May 22 meeting of the Sewerage & Water Board, which Cantrell chairs, where she called the bill by State Sen. Jimmy Harris, D-New Orleans, the work of lawmakers “who don’t understand the operations but make laws and things that we have to align with."

In the Legislature, those remarks seemed to ignite “disdain” for both the board and New Orleans’ broader agenda, said Moreno, who served in the state House from 2010 to 2018. Harris, the most influential arbiter of which New Orleans-area projects receive infusions of state cash, was responsible for millions of state dollars already allocated for the Sewerage & Water Board. In an interview last week, he called the mayor's comments “a smack in the face.”

Siloed talks

Those comments dashed any hope of immediate state funding for the project — precisely the solution Cantrell would later push for. After lawmakers left Baton Rouge in June, New Orleans state legislators, City Council members and Landry’s office began picking up the pieces.

Driving the new round of talks were City Council members Joe Giarrusso, Moreno and JP Morrell, plus Lakeview Republican state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, Harris, and three Landry policy staffers — Southeast Louisiana Regional Director JT Hannan, Chief Resilience Officer Stephen Swiber and Policy Director Millard Mule.

Harris said his chief points of contact for the talks were Moreno, Morrell and Giarrusso, who chairs the council’s budget committee and took the lead on carving out bond projects to find local dollars for the project. Morrell, too, once served in the state Senate; Harris said he appreciates working with city officials with state legislative experience.

Landry’s staff held a meeting about the funding in late July. Council members, a Sewerage and Water Board lobbyist, state lawmakers, business groups and several of Landry’s cabinet secretaries were invited and present — but not anyone from Cantrell’s administration, according to sources familiar with the briefing and a planning memo The Times-Picayune obtained.

Talks about using the $17 million grant from the federal Department of Energy first became public in late August after Swiber identified that grant through discussion with state Department of Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Tyler Gray, according to planning documents.

Cantrell quickly expressed her displeasure for that route, calling it “not an adequate solution” at an Aug. 28 town hall.

A closed-door briefing attended by the mayor and Landry at Louis Armstrong International Airport on Sept. 13 after Hurricane Francine served as a final catalyst for the deal coming together, people involved in the planning said. Cantrell and Landry spoke over each other as Landry pressed the city to "put more skin in the game" and Cantrell again criticized the route of using more local dollars for the project.

Some bystanders were stunned that Cantrell seemed oblivious that that solution was fast becoming reality. Others viewed her comments as a bid to hold fast on her stance that New Orleans had already pumped enough cash — over the years, nearly $90 million — into the power complex.

Resolution

Even as his boss criticized the use of local cash in finishing the project, Montaño helped Giarrusso trim capital bond dollars from about 15 other projects to fund it, Giarrusso and Moreno said in interviews. Also involved in the planning was S&WB lobbyist Paul Rainwater. And the day before the announcement, on Sept. 17, Cantrell attended a meeting at City Hall regarding “S&WB funding,” according to her schedule.

Still, just six hours before the council announced the particulars of its plan, the mayor still seemed to be pushing for a non-city funding source. At a Sewerage & Water Board meeting that morning, she said the city still didn’t know how it would secure the money.

“It's irresponsible to talk about pushing the city to find an adequate source when we have competing interests in terms of priorities,” she said.

Hours later, Landry, City Council members and New Orleans-area state lawmakers, including Hilferty and Harris, issued press statements touting the outcome. Giarrusso's office said the mayor had changed her mind and was supportive, while Landry didn't credit her at all.

At his press conference that afternoon, Montaño said the city hoped to again fund the 15 projects it had tabled. Since that day, both Montaño and Cantrell have been implicated in a 25-count federal fraud and bribery indictment of a New Orleans-area electrical inspector. Neither has been accused of a crime.

That afternoon, Montaño said he couldn't answer for Cantrell's comments earlier in the day. The mayor, he said, had “directed staff to figure this out.”

Staff writer Ben Myers contributed to this report.