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HISTORY Beyoncé performs during halftime of Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans in 2013.
BY TYLER BRIDGES Staff writer
BY KEITH SPERA
ä See HALFTIME, page 8A
U2 performs during halftime of Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans in 2002.
Staff writer
Ryan Quigley thought he might never return to New Orleans. After a night of celebrating New Year’s, he survived a terrorist vehicle attack on Bourbon Street with a mangled right leg and such a deep gash in his forehead you could see his skull. His best friend who he was celebrating with, Tiger Bech, was struck and killed. Then came the offer in late January from Quigley and Bech’s favorite NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles: A pair of lower bowl tickets for Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs in the Superdome.
WEATHER HIGH 76 LOW 64 PAGE 8B
A newly created commission formed by Gov. Jeff Landry to reduce wasteful government spending has been meeting in secret, which independent experts say violates the state’s open meeting laws. Known as the Fiscal Responsibility Program, it consists of eight state legislators and Steve Orlando, a neighbor and fishing buddy of the governor, and has met twice in the past week. One took place in the main dining room of the Governor’s Mansion, the other in the governor’s suite of offices at the Capitol. “We’re just talking to people about who we’re going to hire,” state Sen. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, said in an interview Tuesday. “We’re trying to decide what we’re going to do. They’re not meetings.” That’s not the view of experts. “We appreciate the governor’s goal to make state government more efficient and fiscally responsible,” said Steven Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, a Baton Rougebased nonprofit. “However, as a public body, the task force has a legal obligation to hold open meetings. Transparency is not just a requirement under the law — it is essential for building public trust and ensuring the task force has access to diverse perspectives and critical information that could strengthen its work.” In each meeting, a different consulting firm made a pitch to be hired to identify unnecessary government spending, said Hodges and Rep. Jack
ä See SECRET, page 7A
FILE PHOTOS
Balloons are released during a mini-Mardi Gras parade during halftime of Super Bowl IV at Tulane Stadium on Jan. 11, 1970.
Attack survivor gets tickets from Eagles BY JOSEPH CRANNEY
$2.00X
Inspired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, Landry’s task force skirting open meeting laws, expert says
Staff writer
The Super Bowl halftime show has grown “increasingly vile.” So say 17 Louisiana legislators who recently signed a letter urging the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation and the Louisiana Stadium and Expo District to help make Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show “as family friendly as possible.” “Family friendly” is, of course, a highly subjective standard. What seems overly sexual or crass to some is just fine to others. Popular culture and society at large have grown increasingly coarse since the first FEB. 9 NEW ORLEANS Super Bowl nearly six decades ago. INSIDE And the Super Bowl halftime show, in its current itä President eration, ultimately aims to Trump to attend reflect popular culture. Rapper Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl. will star in what is officially Page 7A the Apple Music Super Bowl ä More Halftime Show in the Caecoverage of sars Superdome on Sunday. Sunday’s big He’ll be joined by the singer game in Sports. SZA, a frequent collaborator. Whether their performance Page 1C qualifies as “family friendly” will be debated. But if the Super Bowl’s history in New Orleans is any indication, the halftime show is unlikely to return to the more conservative standards of yore any time soon. Now a meticulously planned and relentlessly promoted multimillion-dollar segment of the Super Bowl broadcast, halftime was once an afterthought. In January 1967, the Los Angeles Memorial
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La. panel meets in secret to cut spending
HALFTIME From marching bands and Up With People to classic rockers, rappers and scantily clad pop stars, the show has changed
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Quigley thought of the promise he made Bech while they cheered on the Eagles this year: If the team makes the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Quigley would take them. Here’s a chance to keep the promise, Quigley told himself. Quigley thought back to his and Bech’s final day together, which started early New Year’s Eve with a duck hunt in Mississippi. It was a day of a sausage-andeggs breakfast cooked over a camping grill; flocks of mallards and gadwalls circling above a cypress lake; a Boykin spaniel splashing in the water fetching trophies; cans of light beer; bowls of gumbo in Baton
ä See SURVIVOR, page 6A
Anti-terror adviser embraces role in N.O. BY JOHN SIMERMAN Staff writer
PROVIDED PHOTO
Tiger Bech, left, and Ryan Quigley shared a morning duck hunt on Dec. 31, hours before Bech was killed during the terrorist attack on Bourbon Street.
The French Quarter that William Bratton returned to visit on Monday night was a sight to behold for New Orleans’ new anti-terror adviser. Clusters of rifle-toting Louisiana National Guard members dotted every crosswalk of Bourbon Street, some sitting atop heavy barriers being installed for the Super Bowl, while hundreds of State Police troopers swarmed the neighborhood. Bomb-sniffing dogs were everywhere. Just how much of that massive security apparatus will linger beyond the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, in a long-term response to the Jan. 1 vehicle attack on Bourbon Street that left 14 people dead and dozens wounded, may depend to a large extent on the team assembled by Bratton,
Business ...................10A Commentary ................7B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................9D Deaths .........................4B Opinion ........................6B Comics-Puzzles .....5D-8D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C
ä See BRATTON, page 6A
12TH YEAR, NO. 177