The New Orleans Chamber of Commerce held its annual meeting at the Riverside Hilton Hotel, featuring a keynote panel including Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, Councilmember-At-Large JP Morrell, and incoming CAO Joe Giarrusso.
The discussion ranged from resolving budget woes to revamping Safety & Permits to creating to fostering more collaborative regional partnerships across Southeast Louisiana parishes.
The conversation began with New Orleans' most pressing issue: Getting a handle on the city budget. On this issue, mayor-elect Moreno stated, "What could have been a detrimental situation turned out to be to our benefit.”
Moreno explains that the budget deficit, although indeed a crisis, forced the city into a scrupulous examination of its dollar allocation to identify which core services should remain untouched, and which departments had bloat.
Initially, the Cantrell administration proposed sweeping 30% cuts across the entire 2026 budget to address the $160 million deficit, an approach Moreno suggests was like "taking a chainsaw to the budget."
Rather, Moreno explains that her incoming team, led by Joe Giarrusso, took a more surgical approach to “Keep essential services whole.” (You can see a breakdown of which departments were spared from cuts, and a more in-depth look into the envisioned 2026 budget, here.)
JP Morrell added that the initially rocky negotiations with the state bond commission to secure the $125 million payday loan eventually panned out due to the “personal credibility of those you see up here today.”
Morell added commentary concerning an upcoming charter amendment, which will be up for a vote in 2026. This amendment, Morrell says, is crucial to eliminate future possibilities of overspending and budgeting abuses by closing loopholes that currently allow the mayor to move money around as they see fit.
“It’s the existence of this amendment that is, in part, what gave the bond commission security that things would be done differently," Morrell states. "I can assure you that if a similar council comes back with the same problem, we will be in receivership."
The panellists continued to lay out economic plans for the future, including measures like expanding sales tax audits.
“How many sales tax auditors did we (Orleans Parish) do last year?” asked Giarrusso. “30…Jefferson Parish did 300.”
Moreno stated that, alongside stricter audits, she plans to organize deputy mayors more effectively to provide more accessible point-persons for business and residents to go to with municipal issues.
The mayor-elect also announced her continued hunt for a Deputy Mayor of Economic Development. This person, she explains, would hold a broad range of responsibilities, including, but not limited to: managing the activity with the River District and the Port of NOLA, ideating and implementing more economic opportunities in New Orleans East, and propping up the city’s music community.
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“It’s a big role, and we’re still searching for the right person,” Moreno stated. (Those who believe themselves to be qualified may apply here.)
Moreno highlighted her largest priority: revamping Safety and Permits. “It isn’t just quick fixes, it’s a whole revamp,” stated Moreno.
This initiative will be spearheaded by Giarrsuso, who pointed out that New Orleans is extremely slow compared to Safety and Permits responsiveness at the state level, and looks to adopt those processes.
“We have a plan that I will announce in my first 100 days of office," Moreno stated. "You’ll see changes in the first 3 months. But the whole thing will take one year to 15 months.”
The mayor-elect mentioned that the plan will include better technology, training, and streamlined work processes. But she explained that her approach will be methodical, unlike the rushed implementation of the city's BRASS system, which ended up causing more confusion and chaos than it was intended to eliminate.
Moreno also announced intentions to build partnerships with neighbouring parishes to strengthen the city's agenda and representation at the state legislative level.
“We feel like there is so much we can do with Jefferson and Orleans and the surrounding parishes," explained the mayor-elect, "...so much so that we're even having conversations about the possibility of a regional drinking water plant further upriver so that us parishes in the southern regions no longer have to worry about saltwater intrusion. This level of coordination among us makes us so much stronger. We’re even talking about working as a region to go up to the legislature to ask for resources.”
JP Morrell added in closing, “What always mystified me was that through Mayor Nagin, Mayor Landrieu, Mayor Cantrell, there was always this inability for New Orleans to get its act together at the legislative level. Insofar as we are one of the economic engines of the state of Louisiana, we receive nowhere near the resources we could receive if we actually advocated at the legislative level properly."
"Every mayor had their strengths nd weaknesses," Morrell continued. "But I could tell you, going through 3 governors and 3 mayors, it was almost malfeasance the fact that our mayor, this term, had no legislative agenda any given year at all. The council had a legislative agenda. We had asks. But the city didn't have asks… It really excites me to go back to the legislature as a unified front and advocate for resources. You would be surprised, the bridges you can build if you ask for help."