There's an attitude change underway in New Orleans. The recent city elections have transformed a feeling of dysfunction and hopelessness into something more positive, more productive. The window of opportunity is open.
The elections of Helena Moreno as mayor and three new, young members of the City Council -- Matthew Willard, Jason Hughes and Aimee McCarron -- have created a sense of possibility. The job each one does over the next four years will shape the city's future. And their jobs clearly won't be stress-free.
The new mayor has plenty of obstacles in her path -- a city government fossilized by old-style politics, a lack of economic resources, poor coordination among departments and a limp management culture. That's in addition to the current budget mess and the funding of essential services with borrowed money.
Since the October mayoral election and City Council runoffs in November, there is a growing sense that things are about to get better. After all, could they get much worse? Mayor LaToya Cantrell seemed to check out a long time ago, leaving the city with little or no leadership.
Ironically, the budget deficit may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. While the new administration has the tough task of patching together solutions, many of which won't be popular, the extent of the problem could force a new fiscal discipline on City Hall.
City governments have a distinct and important role in American life. They provide the basics: public safety, streets, sidewalks, traffic signals, drinking water, drainage, permitting, waste collection and disposal. The quality of these services sculpts the quality of life for city residents. Understanding this reality is critical.
When local governments give in to political pressure and spend money on an array of programs that go beyond their core responsibilities, they get into trouble. They usually lack the capacity to manage these programs and the revenue streams to adequately fund them. They also neglect reviewing performance over time.
Once a government program takes root, political constituencies
develop around it. Jobs and contracts flow from it. This makes it difficult to change or eliminate a program, even when it becomes clear it's not working. The more such programs are allowed to eat up public resources, the harder it is to focus on getting the basics right.
It's time to clean out the underbrush of city government. The budget crisis makes that easier to do.
More than any other office, mayors define the places they lead. If they're bold and optimistic, the city is bold and optimistic. If they're timid and ineffective, the city is timid and ineffective.
We don't yet know how Moreno will define her mayoralty. So far, she's serious, focused, pragmatic and surprisingly nonpolitical for somebody who spent eight years running for the job. She seems to be looking for real solutions and appears ready to work across political and parish lines to find them. That's all encouraging.
Let's hope she avoids the common pitfalls of well-intentioned leaders. Let's hope she won't allow bureaucratic inertia to hold her back. Let's hope she won't fear taking on big reforms such as overhauling the Sewerage & Water Board, creating an innovative IT infrastructure that cuts costs and transforming the red-tape-laden, compliance-obsessed civil service system into something that improves management and accountability.
Last but not least, let's hope the new administration and City Council instinctively look to smart management and priority-setting to solve fiscal problems, and not to tax increases that make city living even less affordable. All the "free stuff" and compensating tax increases that the next mayor of New York is promising are a bad model for the next mayor of New Orleans.
Clear goals and performance metrics must define what success looks like in the Moreno administration. She and her team seem on board with this basic principle.
Half-jokingly, former Mayor Moon Landrieu used to warn that, in city politics, no good deed goes unpunished. He was more than half right. But that has to change. Whether you voted for Moreno or not, the city needs to pull together. There are plenty of good deeds to be done.