It’s common practice for any city to give a high-performing executive raises when their institutions are doing well. In New Orleans, however, it appears that city leaders can earn huge salaries and even raises – in spite of poor performance.
Take, for instance, Orleans Parish School Board Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. Lewis is set to step down this year – after earning over two million dollars in total compensation since 2015. Lewis was granted several raises throughout his time as superintendent, yet a 2016 Stanford study and 2021 Legislative audit both found significant problems with the way that OPSB does its job of overseeing New Orleans’ all-charter school system.
“After spending 6 Billion dollars of tax payers’ money to become the only all-Charter system in the State, a staggering 73% of our children are not functioning at grade level, compared to 63% in 2005,” said State Senator Joe Bouie following the Louisiana Legislative Audit. Superintendent Lewis himself confirmed that “When you look across all grade levels and subjects in Orleans Parish, just 27 percent tested at grade level in 2019. This is the fourth year of stagnant or declining test results.”
Lewis took the job as superintendent in 2015, meaning all four of those years fell under his supervision. In spite of this, Lewis received several large raises throughout his tenure.
Now, the City appears to be continuing its practice of offering underperforming executives large raises with the Sewerage and Water Board. Last week – in spite of ongoing issues with billing, infrastructure, employee scandals, and more – the SWBNO unanimously approved a 9.5% raise for executive director Ghassan Korban, raising his salary to around $322,000.
Earlier this year, SWBNO’s plumbing department was raided by the FBI after top officials in the department were found to be self-dealing between utility officials, city inspectors, and contractors. More recently, SWBNO employees have again been found using handicapped placards that weren’t issued to them in order to illegally park in front of the utility’s Joseph Street office. Employees have been repeatedly warned against doing this since the practice was first discovered in 2017.
In addition, backup generators at the sewer treatment plant failed during Hurricane Ida in 2021, resulting in severe flooding at the plant and forcing the agency to dump raw sewage. Even before that, noisy backup generators have been in use as front-line power sources at the Carrolton Plant (must to the dismay of nearby residents) following the failure of large turbines needed to run the city’s drainage system.
Sadly, the one major victory Korban has won recently – an agreement from Entergy to front $30 million for a new substation – has now fallen apart, forcing the city to use money granted by the American Rescue Plan instead.
In spite of that, Mayor Cantrell seems quite happy with Korban’s performance.
“As the mayor of the city and president of the board and coming in where our utility was literally on fire, going through four interim executive directors only to find a great leader of our utility and we found that in Ghassan Korban,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at Wednesday’s board meeting.
