I am heartened to see the report that Mayor Helena Moreno and New Orleans’ Chief Accounting Officer are working hard to overcome the cashflow disaster befalling the city’s government.
New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration outlined its plan to get City Hall through the end of the summer without running out of cash, as payments on a $125 million emergency loan continue to put pressure on city finances.
Addressing the City Council Budget Committee Thursday, Chief Administrative Officer Joe Giarrusso detailed a series of short-term steps the administration is taking to curb spending, find additional funding and buoy the city’s finances.
Without those steps, which include a $15 million payment from the New Orleans Building Corp. that the city has secured, the city would have run out of cash as early as April.
“We do not want to sow fear, but at the same time, we cannot sugarcoat where we’re at right now,” Giarrusso told the council.
Moreno also plans to return the State Bond Commission as early as June to seek permission to take out another massive loan. Giarrusso said they’ll attempt to secure a cash infusion that can be paid back over several decades instead of several months by borrowing against property tax revenues. The city has also been receiving help as it parses through its budget books from a team of Hancock Whitney volunteers, officials said this week.
On a brighter note, the city’s lagging tax collections have picked up steam.
As of March 13, the city had collected 78% of its projected property taxes — an increase from 33% just two weeks earlier.
The Moreno administration has also boosted its efforts to collect sales tax revenues through beefed up auditing.
That is a positive short-term fix, but there still lingers the long-term impact of failing financial underpinnings of infrastructure, public safety, and economic development.
The city’s leaders should immediately undertake a scrub of all ordinances and policies to determine fiscal impact and efficacy. In a time of near financial collapse does Civil Service benefit the people or does it just cost too much in lost efficiency? Do any of the feel-good programs (recycling, green energy, NGO driven programs, etc.) really benefit the people or should they be scrubbed to free up funds for more pressing needs? Should the basic structure of city government be reformed? How much patronage can the city afford? How many Federally funded programs that require a local match really benefit the long-term health of the city, or would we be better off passing on them? Is it time to demand that all properties be on the tax rolls?
If trust in government by voters, the state, and rating agencies is the goal, these are fundamental questions that cannot be ignored.
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