This week City Council members JP Morrell and Helena Moreno introduced an ordinance to curb non-essential travel by the city’s top officials in an effort to use the council’s “power of the purse” to keep the mayor and council members at home while the city navigates a series of escalating crises. The ordinance is an unfortunate but necessary step. We hope the council passes it swiftly.  

By targeting “non-essential” trips via a $1,000 limit on travel expenditures, the proposed ordinance doesn’t preclude city officials from making important trips, provided they find a way to pay for it. 

There are many reasons why mayors should travel. Flying to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and federal policymakers for funding or other needs is a key part of any big-city mayor’s job. Travel to other communities, including those overseas, can provide valuable insights into how they handle problems New Orleans faces. And it presents opportunities to broker deals for new investment and job creation.

When things are fine here at home, such trips don’t generate much attention, negative or otherwise. In such times, even the occasional “brand ambassador” trip to a music festival or ceremonial sister city agreement garners little note.

But, as we noted earlier this month, when the city’s infrastructure lies in shambles, broken traffic lights turn major intersections into bumper-car arenas, the murder rate spikes and vast swaths of the city find themselves under water after moderate summer rainstorms, the bar for leaving town rises astronomically. 

As Gambit's Sarah Ravits reported, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her aides have taken at least nine trips this year. These trips have cost $80,000 — most of it on taxpayers’ dime. That figure doesn’t include the cost of back-to-back trips to Europe in the past month to sign “sister city” agreements and to attend music festivals in Switzerland and on the French Riviera. 

The mayor’s office says her European trips helped promote the city’s brand and encourage tourism. “Mayor Cantrell believes it's important to continue to forge and formalize these international partnerships to facilitate a greater sense of understanding and cooperation between continents,” her spokesperson told Gambit. 

That’s a stretch. Even if our roads were paved, our flood mitigation system state-of-the-art and operating at peak condition and crime near an all-time low, that argument would be hard to swallow. Travelers the world over already know New Orleans’ reputation as the birthplace of jazz and one of the world’s greatest cultural destinations. 

With so many crises facing our city — and the ever-present danger of hurricanes this time of year — it strains credulity to say signing a symbolic agreement with the posh city of Antibes Juan-les-Pins will benefit the citizens of New Orleans.

Let us be clear: Our leaders being absent from town during a crisis is always a problem. It was in 2017 when then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu opted to stay in Aspen, Colorado, as intense thunderstorms inundated parts of the city. Landrieu was rightly criticized for that. Cantrell likewise deserves criticism for her recent spate of junkets — and the proposed fiscal guard rails going forward.

Mayor Cantrell and her top aides have spent more than $79,000 of general city funds on seven trips since the beginning of 2022, according to r…

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Email Sarah Ravits at sravits@gambitweekly.com