“I know I’m going to get some hate,” said New Orleans City Council at-large member JP Morrell Tuesday, “but we are the only department using this baby blue uniform, and we are paying a premium because every other department in the country has shifted away from it. So we are paying a vendor to produce a specific color for a specific shirt that we are paying an exclusive premium on for it to exist.”
Day one of New Orleans proposed budget hearings is in the books. And the conversation that took place at City Hall about the future of the NOPD's powder blue shirts almost certainly foreshadows what to expect from the city’s posture toward next year's budget: Justify every cent.
“Think about that for a second,” Morrell continued. “Why are we paying more money to have a specific color of a specific uniform when there is an economy of scale (for) the cheapest color uniform? Right now, officers are paid a stipend to replace their own uniforms; if the cost of that uniform exceeds the stipend, they’re paying for a replacement uniform.”
At this moment in the hearing, the NOPD’s potential retirement of the baby-blue hue wasn’t the issue at hand. (New Orleans City Council will likely discuss the concrete details of this issue during public safety budgets on Wednesday.) Rather, in speaking with New Orleans Chief Innovation Officer Jonathan Wisbey, Morrell chose to use his thoughts about NOPD uniforms to emphasize the city council’s no-sacred-cow approach.
Morrell made clear that he’s urging every department to share this mindset as they navigate their respective 2027 budgets. When speaking to Wisbey, Morrell compared the “need” for a specific color uniform to the "need" for multiple NOPD detail processing systems (NOPD currently uses ADP and OPSE).
“I’m going to be very candid. And I’m going to say this to Chief Kirkpatrick tomorrow: I do not know why OPSE exists,” Morrell said. “I understand the ‘idea’ behind it by prior mayor Mitch Landrieu, that decentralizing detail management was somehow going to prevent corruption. Obviously, that’s not the case, because we’ve seen many cases pop up since then… I think we wasted money in trying to put OPSE to work with ADP because many of the conflicts you’ve seen over the years are that OPSE, separately as a department, did not communicate with ADP.”
Morrell tied the non-centralized approach to a greater amount of “double-dipping" from NOPD officers.
“Because those two systems did not communicate, you could have duplicative entries,” Morrell said. “In a centralized ADP system…you literally cannot have duplicate hours.”
New Orleans City Departments Propose Annual Budgets
Wisbey - representing New Orleans Office of Information, Technology, and Innovation - outlined a $14.77 million proposed budget, which is a $3.06 million increase from last year’s adopted budget of $11.71 million.
New Orleans Office of Information, Technology, and Innovation
“I want to note that (the ‘27 proposed budget) is one million dollars less than the 2025 budget,” Wisbey stated.
Wisbey also outlined a list of “budget efficiencies” identified in the ‘26 budget but could be used to lower costs in the coming year. These proposed cuts include eliminating the DXC building lease, shrinking a handful of licensing costs across various software products, and cancelling public WIFI service at Duncan Plaza and Lafayette Square.
New Orleans Office of Information, Technology, and Innovation
“I think, in general, we would want a robust public WIFI strategy in the city of New Orleans,” Wisbey stated. “The issue we have here is the public WIFI, as it was installed under the prior administration, was a little offset with other priorities. So, for instance, we installed public WIFI in Duncan Plaza. Within a couple of months, there was a fence put up around Duncan Plaza, and the public WIFI service there was hardly ever used.”
In addition to the Office of Innovation, Technology, and Innovation, a handful of other city departments came forward on day 1 with 2027 budget proposals. These include:
The Office of Budget and Management
The Office of Service and Innovation
The Office of Performance and Accountability
The Office of employee & labor relations
The Office of Sustainability.
(Watch the full recording of New Orleans proposed budget hearings day 1 here)
Up Next: NOPD, NOFD, New Orleans Office of Coordination and Emergency Management, and more
Wednesday brings day 2, and the city will hear from various departments that make up New Orleans' largest financial responsibility: Public Safety.
“We’re going to have Chief Kirkpatrick come down here tomorrow and complain about all the money she doesn’t have,” Morrell told Wisbey, highlighting the painful, ubiquitous nature of New Orleans financial reality. “But there are opportunities, through innovation, to have the department generate money that it can utilize for its needs that do not require us to raise taxes at all. It just requires us to consolidate existing services in a way that — A — by having a centralized system, whether that’s ADP or something else, you eliminate the opportunities for double-billing completely. And B — by not paying for this vestigial tail that is OPSE.”
