New Orleans has entered a very risky political climate. According to JP Morrell, “This is when outgoing administrations tie you up with bad contracts that go into other administrations.”
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So...yes, as surely as the sun rises in the east, we’re back to talking trash.
The bitter power struggle by the Cantrell administration continues this week as the Fourth Circuit court denied the New Orleans City Council’s request to nix the Henry Consulting French Quarter trash contract, set to take effect August 1st.
The most peculiar part of this event? The court didn’t care to issue an opinion.
Morrell tells me, “The Fourth Circuit denied our request to step in early. A lot of people reached out to us to ask us to go to the Supreme Court, and we declined to do so, mainly because they didn't issue an opinion. So we have no idea why they denied the request.”
Everything chapter of this saga just continues to drift further from the shore of reason.
Not only are we staring down the barrel of a hairbrained contract, where we’re hitching a $73 million dollar wagon to Henry Consulting, a primary contractor that doesn’t even own garbage trucks and gets sued by the subcontractors they do work with. (Oh yeah, and by the way, the contract says that we pay in advance for these services.) We’re also agreeing to a contract without a cancellation-for-convenience clause, a crucial element that is written into every other NOLA garbage contract.
No one from the administration is explaining why this is a good idea, because it’s not. Troy Henry won’t open up about the disputes he’s had with his subcontractors—the reason they cancelled his contract in the first place. Now, the court is denying the council’s request to suspend or cancel the contract and won’t explain why, even though every part of it stinks.
Mr. Henry’s attorneys continue to push forward. They filed a motion stating they will begin operating under the sanitation contract come August 1st. Morrell says, “This motion is both speculative and entirely premature. That's his own lawyer saying, ‘our client is yelling to the rafters, he's going to start picking up trash on August 1st, but because he hasn't started doing the trash pickup, he could just be talking out of his ass.’”
Meanwhile, the council is trying to figure out a way out of this twisted maze. Morrell explains their reasoning for foregoing the Supreme Court. He says, “Our decision as of Thursday was Game On…Let's not move forward on this very weird motion to the Supreme Court. We're going to have our lawyers move aggressively and with all speed to have the Paulette Iron's case heard by the Fourth Circuit well before that August 1st due date.”
As a backup, there’s a bill fostered by state Sen. Jimmy Harris, which would allow the French Quarter Management District, a private entity, the ability to hire a sanitation company if the city fails to put a contract in place.
“The administration is actively lobbying against Senator Harris's bill that simply creates a safety net to make sure people's trash gets picked up in the quarter,” says Morrell. “There is a complete departure from reality in that part of the government's job. The essential part of it is to provide governmental services, make sure that money is being spent properly, and make sure lives are not being impacted. I'm as tired of talking about this contract as anyone, but I have to remind people this is a $75 million contract that's over the course of potentially seven years with no exit clause.”
Here we are. We’re deep in this ominous period, right before the end of an administration, where someone who doesn’t care and has nothing to lose can make moves that serve their own best interests while actively uprooting the safety, well-being, and basic services of the city they run and the taxpayers who fund it. And these selfish decisions could affect us for years to come.
JP said it best: “The idea that you would kneecap an incoming administration and council with a contract this bad, and that the mayor who's not going to be here for the fallout, triple down on trying to make sure every single set of circumstances is in favor of a contractor and not the residents of the city or the city's financial interests…It is kind of breathtaking.”
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