New Orleans City Business reporter Jennifer Larino wrote an excellent article a couple of weeks ago on the reforms Mayor Landrieu will need to tackle… »
News
“Bad choices based on bad options”
Mayor Mitch Landrieu proposed that all city workers take 11 unpaid furlough days this year in order to help balance a projected $67 million deficit in the 2010 budget.
“This is not a proud moment for the city of New Orleans,” Landrieu said. “I am particularly angry as a citizen and now as the chief executive… »
Tensions rise between street musicians and the NOPD in the French Quarter
Post revised on 6/18/2010 to include the full statement by Chief Serpas, a statement issued by Mayor Landrieu and Councilmember Kristen Gisleson-Palmer, and a Gambit blog story about a protest in Jackson Square led by musician Glen David Andrews.
Don’t Stop the Music. Let New Orleans Street Musicians Play is a newly-formed advocacy effort to support… »
Landrieu reforms budget process
Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued an executive order yesterday in City Council chambers to create a more “transparent and accountable process” for producing the annual budget.
Responding to criticisms of the previous administration’s budgeting process, Landrieu promised to obtain community input in determining budget priorities, and to provide more informative descriptions of revenue sources and the purpose… »
Mayor Landrieu to adopt NolaStat open data recommendation
It’s become clear since his May 3rd inauguration that Mayor Landrieu will be adopting a performance management policy, like Baltimore’s CitiStat model, to improve the delivery of city services to the public.
Times-Picayune reporter Michelle Krupa has been following government reforms being implemented by Mayor Landrieu to shift away from the closed government policies of… »
Time to transition from advocacy to action
The Times-Picayune story about Mitch’s policy shift toward a statistical approach to governance read like the NolaStat policy research paper.
Implementing a data-tracking program will require major improvements in computer technology across city government, Kopplin said. “Everything is paper, and what we put in computers, the systems don’t talk to the systems in other agencies,”… »
Victory
More than three years ago, Citizen Crime Watch was created to advocate for improved public access to 911 calls for service crime data. With heightened public concerns about rising crime after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Police Department was doing a poor job of keeping the public informed about shifting patterns of crime. The calls… »
Cooking the books? Or just sloppy journalism?
I don’t wish to be placed in the position of being an apologist for any public official’s misdeeds. On the other hand, sloppy journalism is equally intolerable.
Consider a Tennessee TV news report that slanted its story to make Ronal Serpas look like he was cooking the books on Nashville crime statistics. Fundamentally lacking from that… »
Serpas sounding like a NolaStat supporter
In an address delivered at his swearing in ceremony on Tuesday, newly-appointed New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Ronal Serpas sounded as though he’d practically lifted language off the pages of Citizen Crime Watch and NolaStat.
I was particularly surprised to read that Serpas was going to partner with educational institutions. A key focus of the Citizen… »
Mitch looking at reform models in other cities
Mayor Landrieu is looking at performance management models in other cities, he said today on WWL. Among the models he likes are the Baltimore CitiStat performance management process, and the D.C. CapStat process — both inspirations for the NolaStat reform recommendations.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino recently demonstrated to Mitch how the Boston 311 system works…. »
Ronal Serpas is an excellent choice for NOPD police chief
As a civilian tech who supported the New Orleans Police Department COMSTAT process during the reform period of Superintendent Richard Pennington, I experienced firsthand the leadership exhibited by Ronal Serpas on a weekly basis for three years. While Pennington was setting the high-overview priorities to reform the NOPD (in partnership with federal authorities and change… »
