MOLDY CITY

Sept. 11, 2006 Times Picayune editorial:

Seeking sponsors for Carnival might have seemed a necessary evil last year, when the city and its tax base were reeling from Hurricane Katrina.

But that doesn't mean that the Nagin administration should seek sponsors for next year. Doing so risks commercializing a celebration that defines who we are, and that would not be an acceptable tradeoff.

Sept. 2, 2006 Times Picayune article:

In a first, Mardi Gras 2007 may play out on live television before a national audience, along the lines of the annual Parade of Roses, according to a firm hired by the city of New Orleans to seek sponsors for the city's signature event.

Sounds like the contract's already been signed. Sounds like the mayor committed the city to a questionable deal before anybody heard anything about it. I suppose that MediaBuys, like CH2MHill before it, might be prevailed upon to allow the city out of the deal, but Nagin shouldn't be putting the city in that position. More importantly, those weren't isolated incidents and they do precede Katrina. Emergency powers have only made it easier for the mayor to enter the city into questionable deals. If Katrina gave the mayor more media scrutiny to contend with, I guess it's only fair that he have emergency powers to even things out.

I've decided to tone down my Times Picayune criticisms*, so I'll make this brief. This isn't the first time that we've first heard about a questionable deal after the contract was signed. This deal doesn't sound as wasteful or costly as the deals involving garbage cans, parking meters, garbage collection, car towing or some others, but it's still potentially embarrassing. So the question is, why isn't the Times Picayune reporting on these deals before they're signed? If the city is withholding information on these contracts until after they're signed, isn't that a story? If the mayor's abusing his emergency powers to rush through contracts, it's at least as worthy of an editorial as snakes on a beach. It might have been forgotten yesterday, but we were promised more transparency at the start of the 100 days. Nagin's certainly not skipping the public announcements to speed up the recovery.

*Jarvis DeBerry will be fair game until he either stops serving as the mayor's chief apologist or explains his Br'er Nagin column. An honest columnist would correct the inaccuracies in one defense of a politician before defending him again.

Last week the two councilmen-at-large called on the mayor to end the state of emergency. Now he's in Houston, as part of what may, or may not, be a national tour. So, instead of demanding an end to the mayor's emergency powers, why not pass a resolution saluting the mayor for the wonderful job he's done steering the city through the emergency and complimenting him on the great he's done representing the city, as well. But, since the emergency continues when the mayor is doing such wonderful things in other places, some high ranking official or elected representative should be designated to have emergency powers when the mayor is away--the lack of any one person to take responsibility for the church demolition could be respectfully cited.

Why does the mayor travel so much anyway? He certainly couldn't be delusional to have national ambitions, could he? Actually, there are national jobs other than the obvious ones--now I'm getting an absurd idea. More realistically, you know man, you can pull in a lot of Benjamins on the national lecture circuit.

Updates: While in Houston, the mayor said that he didn't know who was sending untrue messages that the city was not recovering. Damn lying Tsunami victims.

Something I didn't notice when I first read the Stephanie Grace column cited above:

In other words, they want in. And as long as they're willing to be productive partners, Nagin should welcome them.

Not that any reluctance he might show wouldn't be understandable.

Is she kidding us? What job does she think the mayor was re-elected to? If they promise to behave themselves, the mayor should let the recently elected council do its job. I haven't looked up the law, but I imagine that, at some point, the council would have some legal recourse. Whether in court or the state legislature, nobody would want that. BTW, I really don't hate Stephanie Grace (or Jarvis DeBerry either). We've never met, and I agree with her more often than not. But she knows better than that.

The landfill may well be safe, but I find it hard to believe that all three could be right about anything:

The state Department of Environmental Quality will allow the opening of a new construction landfill in eastern New Orleans that has been vehemently opposed by a coalition of neighborhood residents and environmentalists, department officials announced Thursday.

...

The Corps and DEQ approvals were the last remaining regulatory hurdles keeping the landfill from accepting waste, meaning the facility could open immediately

...

Mayor Ray Nagin, invoking emergency powers he granted himself after Katrina, gave the required conditional-use permit to Waste Management to open the Chef Menteur landfill.

But don't get the wrong idea, the mayor understands the importance of letting people keep trash out of their neighborhoods.

It's no longer a rhetorical question: didn't the mayor give up emergency powers when he took a trip to Jamaica? Seriously it's been over seven months and the mayor's been out of town at least twice for personal reasons. Hearing the WWL reporter end the story by emphasizing that the landfill would only be open for a year and then capped, didn't do much for my confidence-- in either the landfill or the reporter.

In other matters:

Scalia's had a lot to be proud of.

Draw your own conclusions about the first part of the article I cited in the previous post. However, Nagin's running a new ad blaming the state's unwillingness to adopt his plan for the lack of federal money. He might truly believe that the state's at fault, that the White House and Congress wouldn't shoot down any plan that the state presented, he might, possibly. However, if he pushes that on national TV Monday night, I say we don't just vote him out, we run him out on a rail. If he uses his national platform to attack an opponent, even though it means taking the pressure off Washington, we'll know that re-election is his top (or only) priority.

On the other hand, we'll could all end up being happy that WWL isn't hosting Monday's debate. That's assuming that Watson stays on message about the levees of mass destruction and three blocks of New York destroyed compared to 80% of New Orleans.

Ashley seems to have forgotten about Tim. Question, are we really supposed to vote for the candidate who says the most good things about our local universities?

I know New Orleans needs its universities, and please, no angry comments about the trash joke. That's not my attitude, but one couldn't be blamed for thinking it's the attitude of some of our officials--that does not contradict my previous NIMBY posts BTW. Probably has more to do the relative influence of that part of the West Bank and that part New Orleans East.

In addition to the myth of the honest mayor who's politically naive, there's another myth (namely that Landrieu vastly outspent Nagin) about the campaign that the press has helped perpetuate after Nagin used half-truths and (apparently) illegal secrecy to create an illusion:

Does not include any contributions from Chicago fundraiser on May 8 because Nagin did not file that report within 48 hours as required by law.

Maybe it wasn't illegal after all, according to a later update to the above:

Finance list note challenged: A footnote to a list in Saturday editions listing contributors to New Orleans mayoral candidates stated that the data didn't include contributions received by Mayor Ray Nagin during a May 8 fund-raiser in Chicago despite a state law requiring candidates to report contributions to the state ethics officials within 48 hours of receipt. On Saturday, Nagin's campaign treasurer, David White, noting that the law requires reporting contributions when they are "in hand," added, "There is no way we could report on contributions we have not received." White didn't return earlier calls about the fund-raising event, which according to Chicago Sun-Times reports netted $500,000. (5/14/2006)

In addition to the fact that he used a legal technicality to create a false impression, Nagin stated in a debate (between 5/08 & 5/14) that the fundraiser didn't raise that much money. Even though the election's over it still matters, as I'll explain.

I can't find a print or internet source for how much each candidate spent, but I heard (or thought I heard) on the Friday night news that Landrieu outspent Nagin $3.5M to $2.5M. I assumed that I heard incorrectly because, even though a million's a lot, but it's not vastly out spending or outspending several times over like Nagin kept saying and the media kept not just repeating, but emphasizing.

The numbers seem to add up. From today's Picayune:

In the three months leading up to the primary, Landrieu and Forman were able to raise more than $2.2 million apiece. Combined, they pulled in more than three times the $1.3 million that Nagin raked in during the three-plus years preceding the primary.

Nagin's fund-raising picked up in the runoff, but Landrieu easily outdistanced him. As of May 12, Nagin had reported bringing in $542,000 since the primary, compared with $3.3 million for Landrieu.

That adds up to more than $1.8M before the Chicago fundraiser. The first paragraph was typical of the reporting on the issue during the campaign, if anything it was understated.

Oddly, the Picayune was happy to report on the "tremendous" amount that Landrieu spent:

Saying he had been grossly outspent and outgunned in the political arena by his challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the mayor likened his plight to that of a modern-day David.

"I know what it's like to go up against Goliath," he told the congregation gathered inside St. Peter Claver Catholic Church on St. Philip Street, "with five smooth stones."

Nagin returned to that theme later when he addressed a phalanx of news cameras. Asked what the bruising campaign experience had taught him, he said: "I learned that the David and Goliath story was real. And a well-placed slingshot is very effective."

Given up for dead months ago by critics who savaged his stewardship of the city's spotty post-Katrina recovery, Nagin defeated Landrieu, the son of a former mayor who spent a staggering $3.5 million on his bid to oust the incumbent, by a comfortable margin of 52 percent to 48 percent. Nagin spent about half as much as Landrieu.

There are several reasons, that I'll get to, for including the entire quote. Amazing that the T/P assigns two reporters to a story, yet neither one is capable of doing simple math, or at least checking facts.

Even that million dollar difference is misleading. There were several mitigating factors. The advantages of incumbency were evident in the frequent airing of the commercial (in the last week of the campaign*) announcing the fact the city was prepared for a hurricane. Whether intended that way or not, the organized transportation to bring evacuees to the polls amounted to a third party get out the vote effort on Nagin's behalf. And Nagin certainly seemed to have much greater third party spending on his behalf. Not all of it was legal.

One reason (a minor one) that it still matters is that I expect Landrieu to be portrayed as a pathetic loser because he couldn't win even though he outspent his opponent "several times over." It's not just about Landrieu, the state GOP would love to make the entire Democratic leadership look ridiculous.

More importantly, one has to wonder why Nagin continues to make such misleading statements, just to make himself look good at his opponents expense, after the election is over. In addition to the fact that he just can't help being a p****, there is a practical benefit. The more formidable he makes himself appear, the less likely any potential opponents (on or off the council) will be to challenge his continued right to emergency powers--to grant landfill permits and award city contracts, without the normal bidding process or city council approval.

Also, it's time that the local media starts taking a serious look at some of the mayor's statements-- not just how they'll play elsewhere, but whether they're actually true. If we're going to "unite behind the mayor," somebody needs to examine his statements. I'm not very confidant that our media will start very soon. I had planned to post on the media's coverage of the election, but I see that Adrastos already has. Not sure how much there was deliberate bias (if only to compensate for the endorsements) and how much Nagin benefited from the fact that modern political reporting favors the candidate more willing to mislead, or from the media's refusal to abandon its preconceived notions. The media needs to see past that honest Ray Nagin image.

Finally, it's been almost nine months since Katrina, need to unite behind or mayor or not, it's past time to start asking how long the mayor should have emergency powers. If he can't be bothered to state the facts in an honest, straightforward manner, I would say not very long--certainly no longer than mid-October, the effective end of hurricane season. Considering the fact that the mayor seems to the open, democratic leadership style of a Morial, with the effectiveness of a Barthelemy and the integrity of an Edwards, I would strip him of those powers as soon as possible.

*It might be interesting to see how much air time the city purchases (or uses out of its free PSA time) for the hurricane, now that the election is over.

Apparently the city council has the power to take away the mayor's emergency powers:

But it appears the council could end the state of emergency on its own, whether Nagin likes it or not.

The state law authorizing state and local officials to declare states of emergency says such a declaration can be ended by, among others, "a majority of the surviving members of the municipal governing authority." In fact, the law says, "the document terminating the state of emergency or disaster may establish a period during which no other declaration of emergency or disaster may be issued."

Only question would be whether it's settled law that the city council is the "municipal governing authority." If so, the only question would be whether the council members think Nagin is too powerful to challenge, or just don't want the responsibility themselves.

From this story in today's T/P, it appears that the trailer site impasse may be over. If so, kudos to Oliver Thomas, Gov. Blanco and everyone else who made it happen. Hope I'm wrong, but I'm still skeptical:

"About 10,000 apartments -- it could be more, it could be less -- could be brought up relatively quickly," Blanco said. Nagin said some of the units could be ready in one to six months, adding that some groups he has been in touch with estimate that as many as 20,000 apartments may be available in that period.

I hate to put a downer on things, but six months from now will be almost a year after Katrina. More importantly, one has to wonder where those 10,000 apartments will come from. Will using them insread of trailers really help solve the housing shortage? I hope I'm wrong, but it almost sounds like an accounting trick to me.

It seems that once again, after starting out being too stubborn to even explain his position, Nagin was forced to back down:

The mayor promised that the district council members who represent the areas where the remaining 7,000 trailer sites will be located will have veto power over the proposed locations. But he said council members who object to a site should come up with alternatives in their districts.

In effect, the city coucil members will have the ultimate say over where the trailers go. The individual district members will have it, not the council as a whole. In other words, the council's most sensible member (IMO), Oliver Thomas, will have less input than Batt or Clarkson.

What I can't figure out is why the mayor refused to answer specific objections when he was obviously right on the big picture. His refusal to communicate caused the impasse to drag on and embarrass the city needlessly. Ultimately, it caused him to cave. Notice, I said communicate rather than compromise. If you're right, just explaining your position should eliminate the need for all but minor compromises. If you won't explain yourself, you might as well be wrong.

In this case, a self-indulgent, bone headed move might have further weakened the mayor's position. When I heard the mayor say that he had emergency power to overrule the council, I thought that he probably gave up all his emergency powers when he a took a post-Katrina trip to Jamaica, not legally but politically. One has to wonder whether that was used against him.

At any rate, I hope that I'm wrong and today's news is as good as it seems to be. I'll still think Nagin is inept because of the city lay offs. Obviously, a lot of city workers had to lose their jobs, the mayor just seemed to maximize the number of lay offs rather than pay roll savings. That's a weird way of getting the most bang for the buck-- maximize the bang: size of announced lay off, minimize the bucks saved. It's not just laid off city workers affected; I'll return to that in my next post.

Possibly about paradigms, Popper and Polanyi. Just kidding on the last two, but there is one big "P" ahead.

A recent Chris Rose column set the local blogosphere atwitter with an oblique reference to the yellow blog. I was struck by something else:

we are witnessing a public devolution from reform-minded idealist to political buffoon to race-baiting smack artist.

That seems to be the accepted view among Nagin critics. But it does about as good a job of explaining Nagin's (if you follow the link, please read the comment) five years as mayor as Ptolemaic epicycles did of explaining retrograde motion. However, this was supposed to be the prelude.

What follows has nothing to do with overt corruption, although I did have it mind when I made a comment at Adrastos' about sincere reformers not flouting process. Rather, this is about a perception that probably needs to be openly rejected before we can expect the mayor apparent (mheir apparent?) and councilman Fielgood to openly challenge Nagin's leadership. Remember, for over three years Nagin was always portrayed as the good guy reformer in any disputes with the intransigent old guard city council.

I doubt many readers recall a pointless late 2004, early 2005 dispute over funding the SPCA. I only vaguely remembered it:

It's hard for Mayor Ray Nagin to claim that a consistently underfunded nonprofit organization doesn't understand budget constraints. Especially when that nonprofit has subsidized city services for years. Yet that's exactly what Hizzoner did in the case of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
----skip---
Nagin's arrogant stance would be laughable if the consequences weren't so dire --

It amazing to me that the old council was constantly portryed as pestering Nagin, when I read go back and reread accounts of Nagin's willingness to share information:

The budget recommended by the administration and adopted by the council Dec. 1 provided $900,000 for those services in 2005. The SPCA said it needed at least $1.2 million and would halt all its services to the city after midnight tonight unless it was guaranteed that much.

With no solution to the impasse in sight, the council stepped into the picture this week, announcing that it had found a way to provide the extra $300,000. It passed a resolution Wednesday promising to enact ordinances next week giving the SPCA what it wanted.

Nagin on Thursday ruled out the council's idea of freeing up money in the general fund by reallocating $300,000 in federal community development grant money. That money would be used to help pay off a city debt incurred in connection with construction of the Six Flags New Orleans amusement park. Nagin said the federal money already is allocated.

He said he still is not sure where the extra $300,000 for next year can be found, but he said he is "pretty confident we can find another source of funds" in time to present it to the council next week.

I don't mean to attach too much importance to a $300,000 dispute -- the relatively small stakes involved might explain the Picayune's even-handedness -- or paint the old council as the good guys. But the Stephanie Grace column that follows does illustrate the view that must be rejected before we can expect much from the council.
The column is no longer available online, so the entire piece follows with some emphasis added:

June 29, 2006 Thursday
SECTION: METRO - EDITORIAL; Stephanie Grace; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 653 words

HEADLINE: Council wants in

BYLINE: Stephanie Grace

BODY:


For a guy who likes to go it alone under the best of circumstances, the emergency declaration that gives Mayor Ray Nagin enhanced executive powers, in effect since days before Hurricane Katrina struck, amounts to a license to follow his instincts.

Considerably less contented, apparently, are City Council members who don't think they were elected to stay out of the loop.

In a firm but gently worded letter to Nagin this week, the council's two leaders, President Oliver Thomas and Vice President Arnie Fielkow, asked to "open a dialogue" with Nagin, in public, about whether the state of emergency should be extended again, or ended.

In other words, they want in. And as long as they're willing to be productive partners, Nagin should welcome them.

Not that any reluctance he might show wouldn't be understandable.

Nagin's relationship with the council, dominated throughout his first term by Eddie Sapir, started off cordial but quickly foundered. Nagin first allied himself with Thomas, out of friendship, then shifted briefly to Sapir, out of expediency. Eventually, despite occasional joint efforts with individual members, the overriding dynamic devolved into a standoff between the executive and legislative branches.

With Sapir's departure due to term limits and four new members on board, that's all in the past.

Just what shape the new relationship might take is a big unknown. Thomas, a 12-year-veteran and now both the nominal and de facto council leader, remains a sometime ally, sometime critic of the mayor. Yet unlike Sapir, he doesn't spend his days lining up fractious voting blocs or plotting legislative maneuvers.

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, re-elected to District D, has worked alongside the mayor in the past, and as chair of the budget committee, is positioned to be another go-to member. Cynthia Willard-Lewis of District E is the last survivor of the old Sapir coalition, and her politics will likely be guided most by questions over her decimated district's very survival.

The four rookies, Fielkow, Shelley Midura, Stacy Head and James Carter, are still feeling their way. All, to varying degrees, professed a desire to work closely with the mayor during their campaigns, and all seem to genuinely like him. Now it's time to see if that good will can stand the twin tests of time and governing.

In an interview with The Times-Picayune earlier this week, Nagin said he'd like to see the state of emergency end in a few months, but worries about doing it too soon. City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields made some logical arguments for keeping the status quo a while longer, noting that the declaration has allowed the administration to keep FEMA funds flowing and bring in the National Guard on short notice.

Yet members of the previous council, including some returnees, say some of Nagin's most controversial decisions toward the end of his first term, were made unilaterally under the guise of the emergency and amounted to usurpation of the council's oversight of land use, one of the council's main duties. High profile examples include placement of trailer parks and the emergency opening of an Eastern New Orleans landfill.

In Nagin's defense, the old council had a tendency to posture rather than solve problems.
That, again, is in the past -- hopefully. Yet as the recovery progresses, expect the council to be all over land-use decisions that will permanently alter the city's landscape, no matter what form Nagin's promised planning process takes. New battles over turf seem inevitable.

That means, going forward, that Nagin has to delicately preserve his ability to act while allowing council members to feel included.

Even if it takes more than the few months Nagin envisions, the relationship between the two branches is going to get testier at some point.

Might as well try to get things off to a good start now.

. . . . . . .

On Web site blogs and talk radio shows, Thomas was lambasted all week for betraying the public trust.
Frank Donze

I won't have time to do a post on the really important campaign,

It's still important, IMO, because I think we're going to see what amounts to a second campaign over the mayor's emergency powers and control over the city's share of the reconstruction money.

a campaign in which the mayor continues to steamroll the little opposition that he does occasionally face, tonight. But, I will point out that that the people at the Picayune do notice what bloggers write. So, for that matter, does Gambit weekly*. At the very least, it's an excuse to introduce an unpleasant or controversial subject. That's why I think of it as a lost opportunity whenever I see a Nagin critic link to Dambala's posts about the technology office without mention the secrecy or earlier examples of cronyism. Still, an earlier post was overstated; bloggers don't have much power over public opinion.

However, if you view the last fifteen months as an extended campaign (the analogy would be to the campaign for a party nomination) to control reconstruction policy and spending, the sad fact is that we've** been getting our clocks cleaned and that's what has me so angry. The mayor has taken his lumps on crime and his tendency to stick his foot in his mouth, but he's won every single struggle over power or finances. Of course the mayor, and every other elected official, should feel heat over the city's crime problem, but that pressure gets divided at least three ways before race confuses the issue. Criticisms of the mayor for his stupid statements are a waste of time -- been there, done that, the shit doesn't stick. Make fun of the buffoon all you want, but the fact is, the buffoon's calling all the shots.

*That Gambit article ran eleven months ago. People love to talk about the Picayune's brief moment of glory after Katrina, I think that Gambit had a brief moment of glory after the last election. It briefly acted like a true alternative weekly trying to shine a spotlight on the shady dealings at City Hall that the major daily chose to ignore. But even before that column, Gambit showed signs that it was ready to go back to selling advertising.

**By "we" I mean anybody who would like to see at least some limits placed on the mayor's ability to bankrupt and generally fuck up the city

Save the heritage that remains of New Orleans

Over the following months, even years, as Charleston pulled herself back together, we learned that ironically, a historic community's greatest threat may not be the storm itself, but rather the often short-sighted, economically driven redevelopment that can follow. Insurance money and government grants can do wonderful things for preservation when in responsible hands. When not, they can afford to tear down what's left of the irreplaceable.

Our historic and architectural legacy is what made Charleston the city it was before Hugo hit, and we made the commitment, as city leaders and citizen preservationists, to not accept any but the highest preservation standards in recovering from Hugo

You might recall this Times Picayune article that appeared around the same time:

No one here has really given voice to the option of saving what you've got.
....

The storm took away so much, I know. But now you have an even greater risk of losing what's left in the redevelopment process."

The advice was specifically limited to historic architecture, but it would certainly seem fair to say that it has more general implications. While I don't pretend to have anything new to add to the old discussion about saving what should be saved while changing what needs to changed, it does seem that opening up the decision making process now would minimize the recriminations (for the painful decisions that need to be made) that are to certain to come later. I certainly know that the answer isn't to just fall into lockstep behind a mayor who seems particularly averse to sharing information. I should point out that Howell's views have not changed much since the beginning of the year (updated link pdf). It's been nine months since Katrina, the mayor's been out of town at least three times that had absolutely nothing--nothing, zero, donut hole--to do with city business, I think that it's time for Howell to get past the Hobbesianism. It's certainly time to get past the emergency powers.

That's not just sour grapes over the election and today's inauguration. It's been two full days (but time for three nights' evening news) since the announcement of the city's redevelopment plan. Somehow, I have yet to hear word one from the administration or question one from the media about the remaining 47 percent:

About 53 percent of the project's financing would be private. Developers now need to work with public agencies, explore tax credit projects, approach foundations and seek additional investors to put together the rest

.

I'd happily move on to other topics if the mayor started sharing information or the press started asking questions.

Actually, I do have reason to be optimistic on that last point--three reasons, in fact, and I'm gonna share them with you:

Reason number one: As head of the city's "100 day" panel Rob Couhig promised to make transparency his first priority.

Reason number two: Couhig added that, " My goal at the end of the 100 days is that... (and) that there is better understanding for what the future portends in the city of New Orleans"

Reason number three: Couhig...whatever.

A couple of closing notes:

It would be wrong to mention historic preservation without mentioning a recent city council decision:

The debate was longer and more emotional this time, but the New Orleans City Council's second consideration of a request to demolish a three-story, at-least-century-old wooden building at 1508 St. Charles Ave. resulted in the same decision: permission for the owners to tear it down, despite preservationists' objections.

I won't wax indignant without knowing the facts of the case, but coming from a lame duck council, one member of which called the issue, "a very tedious situation for the council and myself"...

If you're familiar with this blog, you can guess the second closing note:

One can only hope that the millions of dollars spent upgrading the building that houses city government are better spent than the hundreds of thousands (more actually) that were spent upgrading the top level personnel that run it.

If Landrieu had been elected who knows what old power brokers we might have read about in Today's Picayune:

Finally, Nagin's second-term push calls for a four-member Reorganization and Staffing Committee to undertake a comprehensive review of his appointed staff....
(Compromised of)
and Jim Singleton, a former city councilman and the longtime leader of the Central City-based BOLD political organization.

I wonder how long it will take the editors and op-ed writers at The Times Picayoyo to remember that Nagin tried once before to create a similar position for Singleton:

It's not clear how much of the resistance reflects a routine yearning for more details of the administration's plans and how much is a gathering storm over Nagin's stated aim to appoint Singleton to a $110,482-per-year job as executive assistant in charge of operations and reorganization.

It's not clear from today's article how much, if any, pay and actual authority come with the new positions.

Of course, we know from Nagin's first term that there couldn't have been any kind of quid pro quo involved:

He finished fourth in the February mayoral primary and then became the first major "also-ran" to endorse Nagin in the March run-off. After the election, Singleton became a fixture in Nagin's transition team

Personally, I'd like to see the T/P stop yo-yoing back-and-forth, and start being objective before the important campaign begins (my opinion in the comments, don't want to imply any endorsement of my views):

It's still important, IMO, because I think we're going to see what amounts to a second campaign over the mayor's emergency powers and control over the city's share of the reconstruction money.

I don't mean to be hard on you, but if even his critics help maintain that image, it helps him keep the power to make some irrevocable decisions. I wouldn't want any mayor--Landrieu, Forman (even if he were every thing his fans thought) and certainly not mayor "I don't know what happened to the paperwork on the landfill."

Sorry to keep harping on it, but the sooner we get rid of well-meaning, shoot from the hip image, the sooner we have an intelligent discussion of the issues.

Judging from today's op-ed section, I'd expect the T/P to stay in praise and defend Nagin mode for at least a little longer