New Orleans City Council passes ordinance expanding city inspector hiring pool
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — After three buildings partially collapsed recently, the New Orleans City Council decided it was time to be proactive. Councilman Freddie King led the charge by introducing an ordinance that was quickly passed, allowing the city to hire building inspectors who don't live in the city.
'This will allow those departments to get some help and get some things done in the city, and make the city much safer,' King said.
It's for more than just preventing building collapses. King says city agencies like the Department of Code Enforcement can utilize the ordinance to hire outside inspectors for maintaining property standards in neighborhoods as well.
Trader Joe's begins demolition for new store in Uptown New Orleans
'Like the house next to me is falling down, we need someone to come inspect it, or the yard next to me is too high; we need someone to come inspect it so it can come get cut,' King said.
The ordinance is effective immediately with a two-year implementation period, allowing the city to assess its impact on hiring and enforcement before determining next steps.
'If we see it's working, we can reup it in two more years. If we see it not working, we can turn off the valve. This is just us thinking outside the box to help the city move a little more efficiently,' King said.Xavier women's basketball is excited to host opening rounds of the NAIA Tournament for the first time
New Orleans City Council passes ordinance expanding city inspector hiring pool
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House Democrats bash Senate colleagues for backing GOP spending bill: 'Huge slap in the face'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Challenge to Tampa Bay Senate seat revisits how it was created in 2022
The federal courthouse in Tampa on June 11, 2025. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix) Day Three of the federal lawsuit alleging that a Tampa Bay area state Senate district was racially gerrymandered focused in part on how that district was created in 2022. The suit, filed by the ACLU of Florida and the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at New York University on behalf of three residents of Tampa and St. Petersburg, alleges the Legislature packed Black voters into District 16 to reduce their influence in nearby District 18, in violation of their equal-protection rights. Democrat Darryl Rouson serves in SD 16, while Republican Nick DiCeglie is the incumbent in SD 18. The defendants are Senate President Ben Albritton and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, and their attorneys began their defense on Wednesday, bringing Jay Ferrin back to the witness stand in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. Ferrin is now a senior adviser to the Florida Senate, but he served as staff director of the Florida Senate Committee on Reapportionment in the fall of 2021, when the districts lines were created. He discussed how he and his staff went about drawing up the Senate districts that year and the guidelines they followed. The reapportionment process beginning that fall was taking place under the guidance of Ray Rodrigues, who chaired the Senate Reapportionment Committee. Defense attorneys aired several Florida Channel video excerpts on Wednesday showing Rodrigues explaining how 'hard lessons were learned' following the Florida Supreme Court's decision in 2015 to throw out the GOP-controlled Legislature's maps after deeming them unlawful under the Fair Districts constitutional amendments adopted by voters in 2010. Rodrigues was insistent that he wanted the 2022 Legislature to conduct itself in such a fashion that the courts would not reject the maps lawmakers would produce. 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Steven Voss is a political science professor at the University of Kentucky. When asked to break down the political partisanship of the Tampa Bay area, he included four counties that make up the Tampa Bay metropolitan statistical area — Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk and Hernando. Based on population, he said, five Senate districts could be folded into the area, and that three historically were reliably Republican while two would favor Democrats. Currently, that breakdown is four Republican districts and one Democratic — with Senate District 14, which Voss said historically favored Democrats, going to the GOP in 2022. Voss took aim at the alternative voting maps produced for the ACLU by Penn State University professor of statistics Cory McCartan. Those maps showed that a district could have been fairly drawn up exclusively in Hillsborough County while still protecting Tier-1 standards there and in Pinellas County. 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David Hogg exits DNC
David Hogg ended his 130-day tenure at the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday, opting not to run again for vice chair after DNC members voted to hold a re-vote for the job. 'I have decided to not run in this upcoming election so the party can focus on what really matters,' Hogg wrote in a letter announcing his decision. The news that Hogg would not seek the role again was first reported by Semafor. Hogg's decision ended a months-long saga that began with a botched Feb. 1 election, continued with a challenge by one of the Democrats who lost to him, and turned into a widely-covered argument about the future of the party. The 25-year-old Democrat, who frustrated some in the party when he told The New York Times that his political PAC would intervene in Democratic primaries, clashed with DNC Chair Ken Martin over a plan to bar that sort of politicking by committee members. 'I commend David for his years of activism, organizing, and fighting for his generation,' Martin said in a statement. 'While I continue to believe he is a powerful voice for this party, I respect his decision to step back from his post as vice chair. I have no doubt that he will remain an important advocate for Democrats across the map. I appreciate his service as an officer, his hard work, and his dedication to the party.'Last month, the DNC's rules and bylaws committee recommended that the full party vote to hold new elections, siding with Democratic activist Kalyn Free, who'd lost the Feb. 1 election for vice chair. On Wednesday afternoon, the DNC announced that the party had voted to approve Free's challenge by a 294-99 margin, and would hold new elections on the grounds that the Feb. 1 vote had violated its rules. In the new election, under the party's gender parity rules, one vice chair slot would be reserved for a male candidate, and one slot could go to a candidate of any gender. Malcolm Kenyatta, who was elected to the male vice chair slot on Feb. 1, had won more votes than Hogg that day; Hogg won the second slot over Free and two other female candidates. The re-vote loomed as much more difficult for Hogg. On Thursday, California DNC members held a call about their plans for this week's votes. Most did not favor holding a new election. But if one was held, several members who had supported Hogg before intended to support someone else, with several favoring Washington state Democratic chair Shasti Conrad, the runner-up to Hogg in February. 'I appreciate that DNC members wanted to rectify the issues with balloting in the previous election,' Conrad told Semafor. 'I'm looking forward to putting this all behind us, and getting back to the work of electing Democrats.' On Sunday, Politico published audio of a May 15 meeting between DNC officers, including Hogg, where Martin said that the vice chair had 'essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to' at a crucial time for the party. Hogg denied being the source of the leak, but that weakened his position with party members further, with several saying on the record, and on social media, that Hogg could not be trusted. That led to Wednesday's lopsided online vote for a new election. Candidates who had competed for the roles in February were allowed to run again, and to submit one-minute videos making their cases. According to several DNC members, Hogg was the only potential candidate who did not submit a video. The online election for the male vice chair role will be held as scheduled, ending on Saturday. Kenyatta will be the only candidate on the ballot, and the election for the other vice chair role will be held between Sunday and all that? 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Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who called the primary rigged — even though Clinton would end up with more votes and more delegates elected in the primaries and caucuses. Ahead of the 2020 primary, Democrats changed their rules to prevent 'superdelegates' (DNC members not elected in primaries) from voting on the first ballot at a national nominating convention. And before the 2024 primary, the DNC voted to endorse Joe Biden as its nominee — a decision that complicated things for any potential Biden challenger, and the three who did run. A few states opted not to hold primaries altogether, pledging their delegates to Biden — who, of course, ended up bowing out before the convention, after the most damaging debate in the history of presidential elections. When will Democrats get past the party's internal struggles, all of them distractions from the work of opposing the Trump administration and beating Republicans? Today, they hope. The Hogg drama really didn't have any effect on Democrats' ability to win elections this year, like Wisconsin's state supreme court race and an Iowa state Senate election that flipped back a GOP-held seat. As Martin said on the call, obtained by Politico's Holly Otterbein, the story made Democrats look bad, distracted from their work, and made life easier for Republicans. But Hogg made his point, one that a lot of Democrats do agree with: There are a great many elderly incumbents who aren't doing much for the party, and they create problems for the people they want to serve when they die in office instead of letting new talent rise the Times, Goldmacher has more on Hogg's decision. 'It is clear that there is a fundamental disagreement about the role of a Vice Chair — and it's OK to have disagreements. What isn't OK is allowing this to remain our focus when there is so much more we need to be focused on.' In Fast Company, before the vote, Devin Gordon talked to Hogg about what might happen with his challenge to the party.
