The New Orleans City Council has called a special meeting for today, and everything on its agenda involves some sort of disagreement with Mayor LaToya Cantrell's office.
Conflict between the mayor and council hasn't existed to this extent in decades, says political analyst and Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos.
"The last time I saw this much confrontation and conflict between the mayor and the council was when Dutch Morial was mayor and that was 40 years ago," said DuBos.
DuBos says those disagreements between Morial and the council were mostly political, but what is happening now between Cantrell and the council seems to run deeper.
"Here you have people disagreeing with the mayor because of fundamental differences in how the city should be run, and whether the city is being run honestly," said DuBos.
The council meets this morning at 10 a.m. and will look into what the mayor's office knew about the relationship between some of its staff and the company that was awarded the Smart Cities technology contract. That company has since announced that it is backing out of the deal.
The council will also talk about the mayor's decision to extend the Wisner legal trust, an arrangement bequeathed to the city more than a century ago, that could potentially be costing the city millions of dollars; and it will consider an ordinance directing the mayor's office use American Rescue Plan Act money to help pay for an Entergy substation dedicated to the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board.
