REAL ID REQUIREMENTS FOR FLIGHTS BEGIN WEDNESDAY 7A
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T u e s d ay, M ay 6, 2025
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Signs in Quarter show support for IV Waste
2025 LEGISLATURE
Changes to jobless benefits eyed House passes bill requiring work search actions
BY MEGHAN FRIEDMANN Staff writer
at risk, as Mayor LaToya Cantrell seeks to yank the emergency contract the company secured last year and put in place a long-term, $73 million deal with a new vendor, well before that emergency deal expires. She has sought to do so in defiance of the City Council. That new firm, Henry Consulting, won the long-term deal under a lengthy contract negotiation last summer. IV Waste secured temporary rights to work in the French Quarter only after Henry Consulting had to pause its contract to hash out a separate dispute with a key subcontractor. In recent months, though, residents and business owners in the area say they’ve
Louisiana could require residents who get unemployment insurance to do more to find new jobs if a bill advancing in the Legislature becomes law. House Bill 153, which passed the state House by a vote of 73-24 on Monday, with most Democrats opposed, would require those collecting unemployment benefits to perform five work search actions a week. Currently, the Louisiana Workforce Commission requires three weekly work search actions, a standard that is not codified in state statute, said Secretary Susana Schowen. Work search actions can include attending interviews, filling out job applications, doing mock interviews and attending job fairs and networking events, said Schowen. Part of HB153 directs the commission to define appropriate work search actions through its regulations. The goal of the bill is to get jobless Louisianans back into the workforce more quickly, proponents say. “When you’re out of work, unemployment is a needed benefit, but it’s a benefit that comes with criteria,” said state Rep. Troy Hebert, R-Lafayette, who is sponsoring HB153. He hopes meeting those criteria will speed folks’ return to work, he said. But critics feel the bill would be overly burdensome, especially for Louisianans in rural areas.
ä See SIGNS, page 5A
ä See JOBLESS, page 5A
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
Signs calling on the city of New Orleans to keep IV Waste as the downtown sanitation vendor appear in windows and on balconies thoughout the French Quarter on Monday.
Fight over trash pickup leads to public display BY JAMES FINN Staff writer
Black-and-white placards have appeared across New Orleans’ French Quarter in recent days, hung from second-story balconies, propped atop signs advertising daiquiris and beckoning from within store windows. They bear a simple message: Keep IV
Waste. The public display points to a political fight roiling City Hall over who should keep the city’s signature neighborhood tidy and attractive to visitors and residents. A New Orleans sanitation firm that has hauled trash daily and sprayed down streets since last year in the French Quarter, business owner Sidney Torres IV’s IV Waste has a wide footprint in the Crescent City, performing a slate of sanitation services everywhere from Uptown to Gentilly. But the firm’s presence in the French Quarter and a wider swath of the downtown area — a tourist hot spot whose residents and business owners have long bemoaned problems with cleanliness — is
Jazz Fest numbers down a little
ST. TAMMANY PARISH
Official sparks constitutional challenge Prosecutor didn’t tell boss of his role in overturning plea deal
BY KEITH SPERA Staff writer
If crowds at the 2025 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival occasionally felt a little lighter than normal, that’s because they were. Approximately 460,000 people passed through the gates of the Fair Grounds during the eight days of the just-completed 2025 Jazz Fest, co-producer Festival Productions Inc.-New Orleans said Monday. That total counts every scanned ticket or pass used to enter the grounds by attendees, vendors, staffers and other workers. By contrast, the total for the eight-day 2024 Jazz Fest was 500,000, including the limited number of 40,000 tickets sold for
WEATHER HIGH 82 LOW 73 PAGE 6B
BY WILLIE SWETT
A crowd enjoys Pearl Jam on Saturday at Jazz Fest. the special “Rolling Stones Thursday.” Jazz Fest producers also officially announced the dates for the 2026 Jazz Fest. Just like 2024 and 2025, next year will span two four-day weekends: April 23-26 and April 30-May 3, 2026. Even as the total number of festival days has flipped back and forth between seven and eight, Jazz Fest’s average daily attendance has generally trended downward in recent years. The eight-day 50th anniversary 2019
STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER
Staff writer
Jazz Fest posted a total attendance of 475,000. Its average daily attendance was 59,300. Following two COVID-canceled years, the seven-day 2022 Jazz Fest also posted a total of 475,000, increasing the average daily attendance to 67,800. The seven-day 2023 fest’s daily average was 65,700. The eight-day 2024 Jazz Fest’s daily
Three years ago, a clear path to freedom opened up for William Wayne Lee, who’d served nearly two decades of a life prison sentence for a murder he denies. A fresh analysis of the victim’s brain, years after the official autopsy, had prompted questions about Lee’s guilt in the 2003 killing of Audra Bland, a mother of two who died of a head injury at a shoreline mansion in the Lewisburg area of Mandeville. Warren Montgomery, then the district attorney in St. Tammany Parish, agreed to a deal that al-
ä See NUMBERS, page 4A
ä See CHALLENGE, page 5A
Business ......................6A Commentary ................5B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................7D Deaths .........................3B Opinion ........................4B Comics-Puzzles .....3D-6D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C
12TH yEAR, NO. 267