The New Orleans City Council has a plan to handle the $125 million it plans to obtain through a bond sale to cover the the budget shortfall it's facing for the remainder of 2025. According to the council's budget chairman, that plan includes oversight by both city and state leaders.
"We will create a separate fund that the $125 million would go into," Councilman Joe Giarrusso said to WWL's Tommy Tucker. "The council would have a weekly meeting--not twice a month, but four times a month--to disburse the funds on a weekly basis to make payroll."
Giarrusso says the city will provide the state legislative auditor with a series of reports each week detailing how those funds are being spent.
"We will all sit down, probably the Wednesday before the Thursday meeting, pore over the report, and make sure the state, the administration, and the council are on the same page," Giarrusso said. "It will start next week, and it would continue. . . and I'm saying through the end of the year, but it would probably be through January that we'd have to do this because I don't know if we'd have our property tax receipts in time to do it."
According to Giarrusso, all seven members of the city council are listed as co-authors of the ordinance setting up this plan.
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