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Council's subpoena power 'on the table' after S&WB skips meeting, Giarrusso says

"How can you say, 'We are going to come to a meeting' and less than 30 minutes beforehand say, 'We are not appearing' all of a sudden? That's not acceptable."

NEW ORLEANS – A frustrated Joe Giarrusso on Tuesday said subpoena powers are "on the table" to get more answers from the Sewerage & Water Board, one day after the agency skipped a planned meeting with a City Council committee.

Monday, council members and residents were prepared with questions for Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration and the S&WB, but they never got a chance to have them answered. Instead, the mayor held a press conference one floor above the council meeting to announce that Jade Brown-Russell, the agency’s interim director, and three deputy directors were out.

The City Council was stunned and frustrated by the move after learning 30 minutes before the meeting that the S&WB was not going appear.

In an interview on WWL-TV Tuesday morning, Giarrusso said the council may have to force the agency show. He said there was no divide between the council and mayor’s office “just yet,” but added that it “would have been much better practice” to warn the council sooner.

“If we have to start exercising our subpoena powers to make people come, we will have to start doing that,” Giarrusso said. “How can you say, ‘We are going to come to a meeting’ and less than 30 minutes beforehand say, ‘We are not appearing’ all of a sudden? That’s not acceptable.”

One of the topics that was supposed to be discussed Monday was a proposal to ease residency requirements to work at the S&WB. Giarrusso had proposed introducing an ordinance that would have allowed the agency to hire people who live outside of Orleans Parish in an effort to fix employee turnover woes.

After the board skipped the meeting, Giarrusso said, that proposal is on hold.

“There’s no way we are going to move forward until we get ... answers,” Giarrusso said.

Giarrusso said that there has been no communication between the City Council and the mayor’s office since Cantrell’s press conference Monday. He said Cantrell offered to allow the council to speak during the conference at 10:45 a.m., but the council was already in the scheduled meeting.

Giarrusso said that the council intends to keep pushing the agency to fix billing and shut-off issues.

Kevin Dupuy can be reached at kdupuy@wwltv.com.

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