“We've had multiple hearings trying to uncover where the secret deficit exists,” said NOLA City Councilmember JP Morrell Tuesday. “We have not found any information that validates the mayor's position that we are in deficit. However, the head of the Department of Finance maintains that we are on a horrific fiscal cliff and that if we pay the schools the money they're owed, everything's going to go south.”
Folks, what a mess. If you listen to the show, you know how much I crow about the inefficiency and ineptitude of the Cantrell administration. I've crowed until my mouth goes numb. And every day, every step this administration takes, we, the taxpayers, see more incompetence, backward dealing, and malfeasance.
For the past couple months, the Cantrell administration has been doing acrobatics, failing to pay New Orleans Public Parish Schools, citing cash flow issues. Now, our already struggling school system faces massive layoffs and program cuts.
That's bad on its face. But there's an additional layer of nonsense. According to JP Morrell, when you look at the cash flow statements, you can’t find the missing money.
Morrell explained the process, “For those of you all know, the City Quarterly meets as a revenue estimating conference, where we basically get economists to come in and estimate if our revenue is on track for that given year. That revenue estimating conference is really the most public way for us to find out how much money we have because the administration is not being forthcoming with how much we actually have. And we expected a presentation in our last budget meeting last week with the receipts to support the deficit. And to date, we have no receipts to support the deficit.”
No receipts. How spectacularly irresponsible does an administration have to be to fail to account for a $36 million deficit? And the only other option besides irresponsibility is corruption.
You can’t just let that kind of money go unaccounted for and act like nothing has happened. Morrell explained that because of this, serious expense cuts are coming, starting this Thursday.
“Until we get information to the contrary,” says Morrell, "we're going to take her word and we will begin the process of trimming spending...The first step will be putting tremendous restrictions on city credit cards for both the council, the mayor, and all departments, and completely restricting unnecessary travel because if we're broke, we shouldn't have people flying around the world or the country or anywhere else.”
Morrell said that restrictions will last until the end of April while the audit is underway.
Honestly, I can't think of a more fitting final chapter for the Cantrell administration, and it's leaving members of the city council dumbfounded. But the truth will come out one way or another.
Morrell told listeners, “It's kind of wild and that it feels like they're so committed to the bit that we're broke that they won't back off and just say, ‘Maybe we're wrong about being broke and we just don't want to pay for the schoolkids.’ But if they want to commit to the bit and they want to continue to hold to this position that we are on the imminent edge of secret bankruptcy, then all we can do as a council know is curb spending.”