Gov. Jeff Landry’s controversial bid to overhaul New Orleans flood agency heads to state lawmakers
By Alex Lubben
Source: The Times-Picayune | Nola.com
April 8, 2025
Gov. Jeff Landry’s bid to overhaul the agency that maintains New Orleans’ hurricane protection levees and pumps will be considered by the state Legislature, drawing fresh concerns that post-Katrina reforms will be weakened.
A bill put forward by Rep. Jacob Braud (R-Belle Chasse) would reduce the size of the South Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East’s board from nine members to seven, and scrap the role of its nominating committee. The bill, HB633, would also require one board member to have law enforcement experience and grant the governor far more power over the agency.
Landry and his adviser in New Orleans, Shane Guidry, have had the flood protection authority in their crosshairs. Guidry, who holds no elective office, has sought to expand the role of the agency’s police force and criticized the committee that nominates board members as unelected and unaccountable. He previously told The Times-Picayune that he would be recommending to lawmakers that they get rid of the nominating committee.
“You’ve got a nominating committee that are like kingmakers,” Guidry said on Monday. “There’s no way to get rid of them.”
But the draft bill doesn’t get rid of the committee entirely. It scraps its role for the east bank’s flood protection authority and gives four nominations to the governor. The nominating committee will, under the proposed law, continue to make nominations to the west bank’s flood control agency.
Guidry said that the motivation for the reform was making sure that the agency was focused on flood protection. He emphasized that he has a personal stake in keeping the city flood proof because he owns “the most expensive home 150 feet away from the 17th Street Canal,” which breached during Hurricane Katrina and flooded the Lakeview neighborhood.
Roy Arrigo, whose Lakeview home flooded during Katrina and who resigned from the flood protection authority last month over the changes Guidry is making to the agency, stressed that “the system isn’t broken.”
“Ever since this was put together in January, 2007, it’s worked really, really well,” he added, referring to the post-Katrina reforms that created the east and west bank flood protection authorities.
Prior to the enactment of those reforms, each parish had its own levee board, whose members were political appointees. After the levees failed during Katrina, the legislature put forward a constitutional amendment, which voters approved by exceptionally wide margins, to combine the old levee boards into twin regional flood protection authorities.
One agency, the South Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, would oversee flood control infrastructure on the east bank in Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard Parishes; the other would oversee flood protection on the west bank.
The reform movement also led to the creation of a separate nominating committee, which was tasked with finding qualified prospective board members for each agency and recommending them to the governor for approval. That committee was designed to be insulated from politics, its members chosen by a group of professional organizations and good-government groups rather than elected officials.
“The bill that’s being presented to the Legislature absolutely kills the constitutional amendment that was approved by 94% of voters in New Orleans,” said Ruthie Frierson, a leader in the post-Katrina effort to reform the levee boards. “It’s appalling.”
“Honestly, I’m puzzled,” said Rebecca Mowbray, the president and CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research. “We still haven’t heard from the governor’s office or anyone connected to it what is wrong with what we’ve got now. We have no idea what their goals are or what they’re trying to fix by making these changes.”
“If there’s some fundamental problem with the nominating committee, wouldn’t you want to get rid of it for both agencies?” Mowbray asked.
Guidry said that the West Bank was being treated separately because that agency has “zero problems.”
He also said, incorrectly, that the nominating committee was not putting forward candidates for the west bank flood protection authority. In fact, there is one nominating committee for both the east and west bank authorities, though two members of the committee are involved only with nominations for the west bank.
Mowbray also expressed confusion about the new list of qualifications for board members.
“The levee system is a defense against floods, not criminals,” she added, referring to the requirement that someone with law enforcement experience serve on the board.
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Steven Procopio, the president of the Public Affairs Research Council, also expressed bewilderment.
“My first reaction is: I don’t understand why they’re doing this,” he said. “And look, I do understand that sometimes governors consolidate power. But this is not something to toy with.”
Rep. Braud, the freshman lawmaker who is sponsoring the bill, said on Monday that he was willing to take suggestions from the good-government groups.
“From what I’ve read in the news, operationally something is going right” at the flood protection agency, he said. “I’ll find out more as this bill progresses.”
Sen. Patrick Connick (R-Marrero), who previously said the governor’s office had asked him to sponsor a similar bill, said on Monday that some of the dysfunction that Landry is aiming to cure has to do with previous spats between members of the nominating committee and Landry’s office. Braud acknowledged that the bill was filed in coordination with the governor’s office.
“The nominating committee, at one point, was like, ‘We don’t have to listen to [the governor],’” Connick said. “You’ve got to ask the governor and his staff what the issues were.”
Kate Kelly, a spokesperson for the governor, did not respond to questions about the bill.
Connick also said that the board in its current state is dysfunctional.
“The people want flood protection over politics,” he added. “The ultimate goal here is to make that happen.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that Braud filed the bill in coordination with the governor’s office.
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