WILL WADE RETURNS: ‘I’M FOR LSU AND LSU IS FOR ME’ 1C
N O L A.C O M
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T u e s d ay, M a r c h 31, 2026
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TSA pay eases lines at airports
13, decreased significantly Security has been under fire for dent Donald Trump ordered the Wait times start to decrease Monday Feb. Monday. MSY spokesperson Erin some time over how federal agents Department of Homeland Security
BY MARK BALLARD Staff writer
WASHINGTON — The nation’s 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers who screen passengers at airports started receiving paychecks Monday for the first time in the month since Congress held up funding in a dispute over how the Trump administration is
handling immigration roundups. Wait times to get through airport security, which had exceeded four hours in large airports, started to decrease Monday, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Lines that recently had snaked into the parking lot at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport since the shutdown began
Burns said wait times were long in the early morning hours, but as of 6 a.m. Monday, they were back to normal and running around 15 to 20 minutes or less. In Houston, which last week required up to four hours to clear security, the international airport reported waits of less than 10 minutes in some of its terminals on Monday. The Department of Homeland
rounded up people suspected of entering the country illegally. After two American citizens were killed by officers in Minneapolis, Democrats demanded changes to enforcement procedures and operations. They refused to fund the department until immigration restrictions were instituted, causing the shutdown. After negotiations stalled, Presi-
N.O. sets ambitious goal for filling in potholes
to pay TSA agents some of the $170 billion the department had on hand from last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The department also oversees other offices, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard, which were not included in the order. And the pay for TSA officers is only
ä See AIRPORTS, page 7A
2026 LEGISLATURE
Bill to end inspection stickers advances
N.O.-area brake tags would still be required BY ALYSE PFEIL Staff writer
“We have to work with urgency to fix these long-standing problems in the city,” Moreno said Sunday in announcing the new goal. The move to quickly ramp up repairs, if successful, would offer Moreno a key early win on her campaign promise of
Drivers in most of Louisiana would no longer need to get inspection stickers under a bill advancing in the Legislature with Gov. Jeff Landry’s support. Instead, personal vehicles would just need a sticker that lists its vehicle identification number. Drivers in some parts of the state, however, would still have to get inspections. New Orleans, Kenner and Westwego have their own rules requiring the stickers — which locals famously call “brake tags” — and those would “still be allowed to continue as they are,” Office of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Keith Neal said. And, emissions testing would still be required for drivers in several Baton Rouge-area parishes because of a federal air quality order under the Clean Air Act. Those parishes are Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, Livingston and West Baton Rouge. Commercial vehicles and school buses would still be required to do regular safety inspections. House Bill 838, sponsored by Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, would set a $6 annual cost for the new VIN sticker, and the fee would
ä See POTHOLES, page 5A
ä See STICKERS, page 5A
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
Steve Nelson, New Orleans deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure and public works, speaks with reporters about the city’s pothole initiative during a news conference in the 7200 block of Stroelitz Street on Monday.
road issues. The new initiative began Monday, and Mayor says department longest-standing In a social media post, Moreno said Sun- crews were scheduled to fill potholes in that her team had set a new goal of the Algiers, Gert Town and Carrollton ‘has to work with urgency’ day filling 1,500 potholes every week until it neighborhoods.
BY JONI HESS
clears a backlog of service requests, in part by quickly ramping up the number of workers dedicated to street repairs. For roughly the first three months of Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration is ramping up efforts to fill in the thou- the year, the city had filled about 500 a sands of potholes that pockmark New Or- week, according to spokesperson Jonah leans streets, with Department of Public Gilmore. Data wasn’t immediately availWorks crews on Monday heading out to able on how quickly potholes were filled work in neighborhoods with some of the before Moreno took office.
Staff writer
Canal Place tower gets new owner It joins growing list of CBD office buildings to change hands
BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer
The longtime owners of One Canal Place, the 32-story office tower at the foot of Canal Street, have sold the building, marking the fourth downtown high-rise to change hands in less than three years. Skysoar Capital Partners, an Israeli investment firm with offices
WEATHER HIGH 83 LOW 69 PAGE 6B
in New York, acquired the building from New York-based Loeb Partners Realty and insurance giant Aetna, which had jointly owned the building since 2002. A sale price was not disclosed. Sources with direct knowledge of the transaction say the price for the 650,000-square-foot building was between $25 million and $30 million, or roughly $45 per square foot. That’s significantly less than the $50 million, or $80 per square foot, that north Louisiana investors paid earlier this year for 400 Poydras Tower, which is roughly the same size and age as Canal Place.
But the Poydras Tower sale included a garage. The Canal Place sale did not include the garage, which is available to building tenants but is separately owned. Skysoar Capital, which is owned by Moshe Meir, did not respond to a request for comment. The recent sales after several years of uncertainty in the office market are a positive sign that investors have “some level of optimism” about New Orleans, according to Mike Siegel, president and CEO of Corporate Realty, which was the local brokerage on the deal
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
The One Canal Place office tower has been sold to Skysoar Capital ä See TOWER, page 7A Partners, an Israeli investment firm.
Business ......................6A Commentary ................5B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................7D Deaths .........................3B Opinion ........................4B Comics-Puzzles .....3D-6D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C
13TH yEAR, NO. 231