On Wednesday (Oct. 9), the New Orleans City Council’s Governmental Affairs Committee advanced Mitchell Guidry, Jr., the RTA’s former manager of planning and data, as a new member of the board. Guidry’s appointment must still go before the full council for a final vote before taking effect.
Guidry, who worked with the RTA before and after Hurricane Katrina, said he oversaw more than 300 buses before the storm, compared to a fleet less than half that size now. He also consulted on the New Links network redesign of the bus system, which went into effect in September 2022, but expressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of the new system.
“I think we can do better … not just for the riders but for the city of New Orleans,” he said to the council. “I would like to start making the RTA accountable.”
In an interview Wednesday, Guidry said he thinks routes should be reworked to send more buses from around the city to the Central Business District and French Quarter, where hospitality workers need to be. He also said recent changes have made some routes overly long, leading to delays.
If approved, Guidry’s appointment will come in the midst of a shakeup that has left the RTA board — which is responsible for setting the agency’s policies and budget as well as approving major contracts — unable to meet for nearly two months. In late August, the agency was forced to cancel all scheduled meetings because the board was short of a legal quorum, the number of members required by state law to conduct public business. That marked the second time this year that the board has been unable to meet for lack of quorum.
The latest pause followed the decision this summer by Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng and the Jefferson Parish Council to withdraw the parish and its three board members from the agency. That move — which was prompted by revelations that the RTA had allocated more than $1 million to a contractor without board approval, in violation of agency policy — coincided with the resignation of board chair Mark Raymond Jr., who represented New Orleans. That left only four board members, one short of a legal quorum.
Adding Guidry would bring the board to five members, but according to Sundiata Haley, the board’s attorney, even if Guidry is confirmed, the board will still be shy of a new requirement in a recently passed state law.
Act 474, which was passed by the Louisiana State Legislature during this year’s spring session, changed the composition of the board. Under the law, Mayor LaToya Cantrell controls five of the seven board seats. (She has yet to make one of those appointments. Her office did not respond to questions from Verite News.) The council gets one appointment — Guidry, should he be approved — and State Rep. Delisha Boyd, who sponsored the bill that became Act 474, gets another.
A representative for Boyd told Verite News that the legislator has not yet selected an appointment.
Haley said the law is written in such a way as to require Boyd’s board seat to be filled.
“The legislation says the board ‘shall’ be comprised of these members and if we don’t have those members then we don’t have the board,” Haley said.
Courtney Jackson, executive director of transit advocacy nonprofit Ride New Orleans said the group is looking forward to the return of board meetings, as they are the main way for riders and the agency to exchange information.
“It’s a point for riders to come in and express what’s happening on their day-to-day commutes,” Jackson said. “It’s where we get transparency from the RTA.”
Jackson said the advocacy group had hoped the new board appointment would be a frequent transit rider.
“What we’ve heard from riders is that they feel that board members don’t know what it’s like to ride the bus and we were hoping that this next pick would have that rider perspective.”
It was not immediately clear when the council plans to take a final vote on Guidry’s appointment. As of Wednesday afternoon, the item did not appear on the agenda for Thursday’s full council meeting, and the Clerk of Council’s office told Verite News that there were no plans to add it. That would mean the earliest date the council could vote on the appointment is at the following meeting on Thursday, Oct. 24, two days after the RTA’s next scheduled board meeting.
Source: This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Photo by Nout Gons: https://www.pexels.com/photo/city-street-photo-378570/
