Newell: Budgeting $45,000 for NOPD overtime makes New Orleans seem as if it's ruled by a band of idiots.

I want everyone to take a little time out of their day to read two quotes.

“If we spent every dollar this entire year and everything comes to fruition, we will end the year with a 100 million dollar fund balance.”

“This financial snapshot, I hope, presents the opportunity for the city to make appropriate adjustments, but should assure the public that our financial position is stable through continued fiscal stewardship and financial planning, the city assures structural balance through 2025 and heading into 2026.”

Today is October 23rd, 2025.

The city of New Orleans has 5 payroll periods left, and we are unsure whether we have the cash on hand to pay city employees.

Somehow, someway, between April and October, a $100 million surplus warped into a $163 million deficit. I’ll tell you this much: That doesn’t just happen.

Today, the council voted to approve a $125 million bond request from the state commission. So we might have a lifeline. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all have hot smoke coming out of our ears. Because we've all been lied to.

Now, the city administration stands before the council saying, We’ve been warning you!... We’ve tried to tell you about this!

You'd think at some point they'd get tired of lying.

And frankly, I think the city council’s reaction should’ve been much more aggressive during these meetings. They ought to call out every one of the grade-A falsehoods being spewed about on live broadcast.

Collectively, our city looks like a band of idiots. And if we want any hope of remediation, we need people to step up, take responsibility, and stand in honesty. Because we’re on the brink. People are leaving, and if we have a mass exodus of city employees, our city can not handle the added pressure.

Of course, now we're hearing all this blather about the government shutdown and how a lack of FEMA reimbursements is to blame. That worsens the situation, no doubt, but when you look at the numbers, you realize it’s yet another lie to stack on top of Bullshit Mountain. It's on us to manage that money.

In 2021, the city worked out a situation where FEMA would advance 90 to 120 million dollars periodically, and the city would dump that into its general fund. And it was set up all wrong. In my opinion, there would have been a special revenue fund set up to account for all of these dollars, and for JIRR separately.

What they are saying is that when that payment stopped, all hell broke loose. And that's why we're making this representation that the shutdown is to blame. But this should have only been in relation to JIRR, not for the entire city. And in reality, these are all sideshows because, presently, the city is only owed $5 million in reimbursements by the federal government.

So what of the other $158 million?

And the last thing, which really sums up this whole catastrophe: How anybody could put a line item for overtime for the New Orleans Police Department at $45,000 is beyond me.

A budget is supposed to be a sacrosanct document. It means something. It’s a city’s guiding light. Of course it’s not going ot be perfect. But it has to be taken seriously.

$45,000 is a plugged number, plain and simple. And I'm wondering how many other plugged numbers there are crammed in there.

There’s no other way around it. The moment someone put that number down, that budget was not worth the paper it was written on.