There may be a pathway to resolve the ongoing dispute between the New Orleans City Council and Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration surrounding the Wisner Trust.
City councilman Joe Giarrusso told WWL's Newell Normand on Monday that the city "admitted all of the allegations that the council set forth" in its lawsuit over the question of to whom the funds in the trust belong.
"The city has not denied the fact that the trust expired nine years ago in 2014," Giarrusso told Normand. "The city has not denied the fact that the city itself, as we've been saying, is entitled to all of the trust assets. And the city doesn't deny that the ratification agreement--the agreement that was supposed to extend the trust in perpetuity--is a nullity."
The council sued the city in an attempt to dissolve the Wisner Trust. That trust is a city-controlled entity that owns thousands of acres of land, including most of Port Fourchon. That would cut out other beneficiaries in the trust and make the city the sole owner of the land and its revenues. The Mitch Landrieu and the Cantrell administrations extended the trust beyond its 2014 expiration date. That's cost the city millions of dollars in royalty revenues from the thousands of acres of land at and around Port Fourchon.
Giarrusso and his fellow council members argue that the extensions of the trust granted by Landrieu and Cantrell are illegal and invalid. In September, a judge barred the city from making payments from the Wisner Trust unless the court approved those payments.
Giarrusso says this puts the council one step closer to recovering all of the money that it believes belongs to the city.
"What they essentially do is realign the city with the council on this Wisner matter and now sets us on a course, in my view, having both the city and the council united in trying to pursue the remaining heirs to get all of these trust assets back into the city's hands."
