“I'm here to tell you, Newell, I'm never gonna sign off on a $75-million contract that I don’t think is above board. And if this is the route they want to take — as much as the city complains about state intervention — cutting off trash pickup in the Quarter is inviting state intervention.”
JP Morrell joined the Newell Normand Show to discuss a message he feels he must get across to New Orleans residents: Troy Henry’s ‘contract’ is not yet approved.
“Mr.Henry is doing his victory tour about his August 1st contract,” says Morrell. “Currently, he has no contract. And what I find very telling and grifty about this is that after he ‘won,’ approval from Judge Irons, she allowed us to move forward with the expense appeal. Then he came back to the council to try and get his contract approved again. Yet again, the council did not."
“So he knows he doesn't have a contract,” Morrell states again. “It's not what a reputable business person would do. They'd let it play out in court rather than threaten everybody with a trash apocalypse.”
Morrell points to another troubling detail: The court building that's ruling on his contract is located in the French Quarter.
“You're literally cutting off trash pickup to the courts while trying to get them to rule in your favor. That’s some next-level, like John Gotti moves,” Morrell explains.
Morrell claims that this whole process is an attempt by Cantrell and Henry to strong-arm the courts and coerce them into deciding in Henry’s favor. “It's aggressively and purposely premature insofar as the courts are going to take their time. They have a docket of people in front of us…I guess this could be interpreted as a time to get the case expedited. But as you know, it never ends well when you try to force courts to do something with a gun to their head. And, in doing so, put the residents and businesses of the Quarter at risk.”
"So on August 1st," he continues, "if the courts haven't ruled that Mr. Henry's contract is valid… Mr. Henry has no contract approved by the New Orleans City Council... It's an epic level of gaslighting."
While the IV Waste contract awarded in December was an emergency, 1-year contract, that the city could end with a 90 days notice at any time, Morrell explains that Henry’s not-yet-valid contract is much longer, and much more expensive.
“The contract Mr. Henry wants is a seven-year contract that begins the last year of this mayor's term and covers most of the next mayor's term,” Morrell explains. “It’s important for a council, no matter who the mayor is, when you're talking about multi-year obligations that come out of the city's bottom line that affect businesses and residents, to scrutinize those contracts.”
Morrell explains that Mayor Cantrell has done much to wield authority over the contract approval process to push its confirmation through. “You have these efforts by the mayor to limit the council's authority over these contracts that she wants to sign left and right,” Morrell says.
However, Morrell states that the council holds the final power of the purse.
“At the end of the day,” Morrell explains, “The council pays the bills, so when you're signing bad contracts, the council absolutely should have some input in certain circumstances, particularly when you are talking about a 7-year, $75+ million contract. The council needs to make sure that everything is on the up and up, and Mr. Henry couldn't even find a single council member to offer the motion to give him the contract on either occasion.”
Chief among these concerns is that Troy Henry relies on facilitating third parties to carry out services rather than owning and overseeing the equipment himself. Therefore, those carrying out city services aren’t ultimately accountable for the quality of service.
“The initial controversy that cost Mr. Henry the goodwill of the contract was when he substituted Richard's Disposal,” says Morrell. “We found out in the meeting, the original meeting we're all hell broke loose, that the facilitator had hired another facilitator who had hired a company out of Monroe to do the actual trash pickup. That tells you that you've got a bunch of Russian nesting dolls providing a service—a basic service. Then when something goes wrong, the person at the top who's not doing the work is eating the most of the lunch.”
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