Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu said state tax laws have been “robbing” the city of New Orleans for years and now he wants to do something about it. But, Landrieu does not have an exact plan in place, rather three goals that he would like to accomplish, which includes more spending and tax hikes.

Landrieu cited that the city’s general fund only made a net profit of about $500,000 thanks to the Super Bowl XLVII, which was held in New Orleans.

“I started to notice a new topic of conversation at the community meetings that I go to throughout the city,” he said Wednesday (June 25). “How did the city invest the Super Bowl money? Why wasn’t the mayor using what was surely tens of billions of dollars in Super Bowl money to fix the streets? Seemed like a logical question. But here’s the truth: Most of the benefit went to others and to the state.”

“Even though the Super Bowl is a multimillion-dollar event, this city’s general fund, your bank account, only netted $500,000, barely breaking even for the army of police, fire, EMS, sanitation, public works, permitting and other city employees who work day in and day out to make sure everything went off without a hitch,” he said.

But, Landrieu conveniently leaves out the fact that overall, New Orleans’ economic netted impact from the Super Bowl was $480 million for the region, according to a study conducted by the University of New Orleans.

Super Bowl XLVII produced a total of $480 million in net economic impact for the New Orleans metro area economy. This total economic impact consists of $262.8 million of direct spending and $217.2 million of secondary spending. The net economic impact for Super Bowl takes into account the displaced economic benefits of potential convention and visitor spending that occur in the absence of a Super Bowl.

Then there are the objectives that Landrieu points out which he would like to accomplish in the next year.

The first is the standard “invest in New Orleans” mantra, which politicos understand is code-word for “spend, spend, spend.” The second is getting voters on board with a plan to spend “$7.5 million in tax money dedicated to the city’s Law Enforcement Taxing District for capital improvements on operations at Orleans Parish Prison instead.” And last, but not least, getting voters to approve a 10-mills property tax hike that would fund fire and police services.

The tax hike was part of a bundle of tax hikes which Landrieu had to get approved through the Louisiana legislature first before allowing the proposition on the Nov. 4 ballot. For a homeowner in the city with a property value of $200,000, the increase estimates to around $31 a year. The tax hike is the only one pushed by Landrieu that passed through the legislature.