The Economic Development and Special Development Projects Committee met on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 10:00 AM, chaired by Councilmember Matthew Willard. Present were Councilmembers J.P. Morrell, Aimee McCarron, and Eugene J. Green (who entered after roll call). Councilmember Jason Hughes was absent. The committee considered a major rewrite of the responsible contractor ordinance, approved two contracts, and received a presentation on the New Orleans East Innovation and Industrial Corridors. All votes were unanimous.
All right, Miss Spears, can we get started? We sure can. Roll called. Council Vice President Willard. Here. Council President Morrow. Councilmember McCarrin. Second item on the agenda is approval of the June twenty third, twenty twenty-six minutes, but we have a correction to the minutes. The minutes reflected that Councilmember McCarron was present, but she was not. They have since been corrected, so we need to approve the minutes as amended. Seconded by Council President Morrell. We know most of the city's contractors do excellent work and comply with our living wage ordinance, classify their workers correctly, and employ licensed subcontractors for work that's contractually obligated that way. Unfortunately, a few do not. Today we're building on this foundation with the full rewrite of the responsible contracting ordinance to create administrative and enforcement pathways to hold contractors on city jobs accountable to federal, state, and local laws in accordance with Louisiana's public bid law. I'm excited to take this on because it represents so many things I believe in, taking responsibilities for our own actions, transparency in government, and fair enforcement to improve conditions and compliance. At the end of the day, this ordinance is about making the city a more transparent and more accountable steward of public projects. We also want our contractors to know that we need you. We appreciate you, but we need you to follow our rules when you're doing work for us. Significant changes to the ordinance include it gives responsibility over enforcement of the ordinance to the chief procurement officer and the Bureau of Purchasing. It creates a responsibility hearing process so that the chief procurement officer has a pathway to deem bidders of contactors non-responsible. It establishes collaboration between the chief procurement officer, department heads, and the law department to investigate issues and complaints. It sets an effective date of January 1st, 2027, so that the administration, department heads, and contractors are clear about when enforcement will begin. It establishes stipulated damages within city contracts so that contractors can be held financially responsible for their own violations of our law or those of their subcontractors. And it establishes a public database of contractors who have been deemed non-responsible and makes the non-responsibility designation last for three years. Couldn't get here today without the partnership of our uh men and women of the AFL CIO. So at this time I'm I'm happy to turn it over to you guys. I don't know what order you want to go into, but uh please introduce yourself and Tiger. Uh it's always great to see you. Andy and Chip, thank you for coming down and thank you for your work on this as well. Thank you, me. Thank you, Councilman Willard. Uh I don't know how you follow up that open remarks because uh you couldn't have said it any better, but uh I want to first address to Councilman Morrell, um Amy, all you guys say McKaren and even Matt Willett. Uh but anyway, in 2012, after being here for Hurricane Katrina representing IBW and building trades. Well, um, you know, we saw thousands, not hundreds, but thousands of people right here in this community, the City of New Orleans, who got beaten cheap, you know, from unscrupulous contractors came in from all over the place. Now we're not reliving that today, but who's to say that doesn't happen again tomorrow? God forbid it doesn't. But with that being said, some six years later, I think it was 2012, uh, that I started with a responsible bidder ordinance here, but when we did that, you know, trying to lobby some of the council members and said, look, Mont just started. Get it introduced, and then we can put some penalties and all that stuff later. Well, later came was 2019. We had another council. We thought maybe we should take another stab at it. And uh right when we was about to do it, COVID hit. So uh in 2021, uh by that time, Chip and Andy now representing the building trades and and uh Secretary Treasurer, AFL CIO took this thing on, and one thing that did come good out of that one was that it made the general contract responsible because I can tell you from just personal experience myself. I remember chasing down contractors where it was a general contract, and they said no, it was uh the electrical contract, and electrical contract said I subbed it out to this one, and you chase it down three tiers of subcontractor, subtract subcontractor, and you wind up with two men in a truck, and you can't find not only two men, you can't find a truck either. So we thought this was deemed necessary, and now we're trying to put some real penalties and some real uh uh restrictions in here for unscrupulous contractors that you know the way I put it back then, rip rape and rob the city of New Orleans and the workers that work in it. So uh I'm gonna turn it back over to Chip now, and uh, because Chip been working on this very diligently with many others, and uh including myself, Nancy, so Chip. Oh council members, thank you. And thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Tiger. Like Tiger had mentioned, um, we we picked this back up in 2019.