Here’s how New Orleans candidates say they’ll fix the city’s broken permitting system

By Kaylee Poche

Source: Gambit

October 4, 2025

Ask any New Orleans mayoral or city council candidate about the city’s permitting process, and you’re sure to hear that it’s broken and needs to be “revamped” to make it easier to do business in the city.

Saying that much is the simple part. The hard part comes with the follow-through in turning around the Safety and Permits and Code Enforcement departments and changing the rules in a way that respects New Orleans’ unique economy, from selling barbecue and cold drinks at second lines to street-hawking straw hats outside the Fair Grounds.

“The frozen cup lady on the corner by the elementary school I went to hustled enough money selling frozen cups and CheeWees bags to send her kids to private school,” said mayoral candidate and Council Member Oliver Thomas on Gambit’s podcast. “That’s part of New Orleans.”

But government regulations — and the often uneven and sporadic enforcement of them — threaten the very aspects of New Orleans that make the city what it is.

During Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration, there have been crackdowns on vendors on Bourbon Street, St. Claude Avenue and at second lines. In 2024, the administration decided to start applying an old rule meant for car shows to art markets, imperiling the future of art markets in the city.

Meanwhile, restaurants, food trucks, pop-ups, vendors and market organizers alike have difficulty navigating the city’s permitting process. Not only is it hard to figure out what permits you need and how to get them, but the requirements can be impractical and unaffordable for micro businesses trying to test out their products or gain their footing.

Having money and resources to hire an expert or connections at City Hall can help. But even then, the process can still take a long time, forcing businesses to delay openings or set up shop in a surrounding parish instead. Others make the decision to risk it and open anyway, hoping they don’t get caught and fined.

“Businesses in order to thrive, in order to decide what cities they’re going to do business in, they need predictability. Without predictability or a level of certainty on how long it will take to get a permit, how much it’s going to cost, you can’t expect businesses to stick around your city,” said mayoral candidate and state Sen. Royce Duplessis at a Downtown Development District forum in September.

Thomas said at the same forum that even with him being a council member, it took almost a year for his niece and nephew to get the permits they needed for their businesses.

“My niece and nephew are two young entrepreneurs. They own two businesses,” he said. “It took nine months for them to get their permit with my help.”

Here’s what the candidates have already done and say they’ll do to improve the city’s business permitting system.

Permitting problems

People have long been complaining about business and other permitting problems at City Hall, and one of the biggest complaints is how long it takes to get a permit from the city. Many report waiting months, and some over a year, to get the permits they need.

Mayoral and council candidates generally agree that the turnaround should be quicker, and Moreno is setting the goal of responding to permit applicants within 72 hours, she said in a Bureau of Governmental Research survey. On her website, she says she plans to identify which permits are taking a long time to review and address the reasons why.

In 2013, then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu opened the city’s One Stop Shop, aimed at making the process more efficient by getting key agencies on the same floor at City Hall. They also launched a website that was supposed to clarify what permits a person would need and how to get them.

But business owners told Gambit back in 2021 One Stop was a misnomer and described a permitting process that was confusing as ever, with different city employees giving them contradictory advice.

To address this, Duplessis has proposed creating the role of case manager, where a single employee can walk an applicant through the entire permitting process. Similarly, mayoral candidate and Council Vice President Helena Moreno has suggested a “concierge service” to assist people with permits.

Duplessis also has talked about how the Department of Safety and Permits has seven divisions, each with multiple subdivisions, and lacks proper communication between them.

“We have to move beyond these silos, break down some of these walls, cross train employees so that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing,” he said.

Those with non-restaurant food businesses have also talked about the hurdles they’ve had in determining which permitting scheme their business fell under — in part because the process hadn’t kept up with the changes to the food scene, which has been seeing more food pop-ups since the beginning of the pandemic.

Hearing those complaints, Moreno created a pathway for restaurants, bars and breweries to legally host food pop-ups on a regular basis by sharing their kitchen with them. That way pop-ups can meet health department requirements by cooking out of an inspected kitchen.

Moreno says as mayor she would continue to look at making new permits or changing rules. “I would find ways to say, OK, is there a path to make this more workable, instead of just being so punitive?” she said on Gambit’s podcast.

Still, a lot of pop-up owners — especially those just starting out — don’t have relationships with restaurants, bars or breweries with available kitchen space or can’t afford the permits. Annual permits cost a vendor $200 and a host space $550.

The permits also don’t allow vendors to sell “on public sidewalks or streets unless the vendor has special permission.” Some vendors told Gambit that even if cooking inside, they prefer to sell on the sidewalk or street to attract passersby.

State Rep. Jason Hughes, who is running for the District E council seat representing New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward, told Gambit he believes in revisiting commercial kitchen requirements for vendors.

“I do not support the requirement that small vendors and street vendors have to use a commercial grade kitchen,” he said. “That certainly doesn’t guarantee safety.”

Director blames applications with missing documents

At an August city council meeting, Safety and Permits Director Tammie Jackson blamed people submitting incomplete permit applications for the delays. She said department staff were “spending like 80% of our time on 20% of the permits that come in with no documentation.”

Jackson said prioritizing applications that include the required documents would help the department process and give out permits quicker. She said the department was considering changing its policy to closing out applications if the applicant didn’t get a document back to the department within a week of them asking.

Thomas asked about provisional permits that could be given to business owners with a history of following permitting laws and requirements while they apply for a permit.

But Jackson insisted that continuing to process applications in the order the department receives them is the “fairest way.”

“That’s why we want to cut down on the number of frivolous applications that we receive instead of focusing on a name we may know,” she said. “We want everything to be fair.”

However, another official said department staffers had explored creating “express lane” permits or permits that last for several years.

“I like Express Lane, but because One Stop historically has meant stop, right? And I don’t want express lane to be to get in an express lane and get run over,” he said. “So let’s try to find some meaning in these.

Another Safety and Permits official told council members that the department was considering raising permitting fees, citing inflation. They said their fees have stayed flat since 2014 but that inflation had increased by 35%. The official said increasing the fees would bring in an additional $1.5 million to the department.

Thomas pushed back by saying the department should instead focus on processing permits more efficiently.

“If we’re creating an atmosphere where business can be done quicker, then folk will look to invest at a higher level,” he said.

Candidates agree that upgrading technology will make the permitting process more efficient.

State Rep. Matthew Willard, who is running for the Division 1 citywide council seat, said at the Step Up forum in July that the city should have an online permitting dashboard with dates people request and receive permits.

At the DDD forum, Duplessis said artificial intelligence could help make the permitting process more efficient, pointing to the city of San Jose, California, which starting next year will use AI to pre-check some of its applications and identify missing information.

He also said the process should be able to be completed entirely online, rather than having people come downtown to City Hall during the work week.

“We have to get to a place of operating City Hall from the mindset of 2035 and not 1995,” Duplessis said.

Permitting employees

Hughes told Gambit that morale is low among Safety and Permits employees. To fix that, he wants to make sure that employees are both properly paid and trained. Then he said he’d focus on holding them accountable.

Thomas has been talking about creating performance benchmarks for city employees across the board. He’s also said leadership impacts the culture at City Hall and its departments, reminiscing about when he was previously on the council in the ’90s and 2000s and some people were still working at City Hall until 10 or 11 p.m.

“If the leader takes pride and the director takes pride, then the people who work there also have pride,” he said at the DDD forum.

State Rep. Delisha Boyd, who is running for the Division 1 at-large council seat, suggested that Safety and Permits employees may need to be replaced in a restructuring of the department.

“People who think that they’re doing business just the way it’s always been done, maybe it’s time for them to retire from that business,” she said at an Urban League forum on Sept. 3.

Meanwhile on her website, Moreno says the city needs to give more money to Safety and Permits and Code Enforcement, whose budgets she says were cut by nearly $4 million last year. If elected mayor, she says she’d reverse those cuts.

Will the crackdowns continue?

Duplessis is the only mayoral candidate who has talked about some kind of enforcement push against unlicensed street vendors. He said at the DDD forum that he wanted to crack down on French Quarter street vendors “to set a tone downtown” and make people feel safe.

The scene on Bourbon Street is different from other places in the city. In addition to food vendors, there are shot girls and people selling photos with snakes and other animals.

“There’s a lot to unpack there, especially when you talk about people, illegal vendors, people who show up and just kind of do what they want to do downtown, and how we have to aggressively address that,” Duplessis said.

He said then that this would be a larger push to bring a sense of lawfulness to the tourist-heavy area, which would also include signs to deter people from jaywalking across Canal Street.

“We have to tone set down there and send a message that certain things are just not going to be tolerated,” he said. “I believe that that’s a big part of what will ultimately connect to crime downtown.”

However, in a podcast interview with Gambit the following week, he said he didn’t believe in enforcement pushes without first educating people on how to get the required permits and making it accessible to do so. He also said it was unfair for some people to go through the permitting process while others aren’t.

“We can’t just crack down without showing people the way to do it the right way,” he said. “Because if you’re operating your business legally, you’re doing it the right way, but somebody comes and sets up shop right in front of you, they’re not doing the right way. We can’t do that.”

Former Council Member Cyndi Nguyen, who is running against Hughes for her old District E council seat, backed the Cantrell’s administration’s vow to crack down on pop-ups in 2022. But she also said in a BGR survey that she would “push for permit reform that includes guaranteed response timelines, a simplified digital system, and technical assistance for small businesses, especially those unfamiliar with city processes.”

Hughes says he would not support enforcement against unlicensed vendors until the city fixes its permitting process.

“Until we get that piece right, I do not support aggressive enforcement because we’re not holding our end of the bargain,” he said.

Why it matters

Whatever the solutions are to making New Orleans’ permitting process work fairly and efficiently, it’s important to find them — and soon.

Boyd said at the Urban League forum that she hears from many clients at her brokerage firm that they wish they could get out of deals they’ve invested in New Orleans because they’re having so many issues with the permitting process.

That reputation is making the city lose out on potential businesses.

“People from New Orleans familiar with the (restaurant) Bottom Line, that new owner has been waiting 10 months for a permit to put that property in commerce,” Boyd said. “We’re losing money from not being able to be business friendly.

And how the system is “revamped” will impact the city’s culture and the future of street vendors, from longstanding favorites to new entrepreneurs trying to test the market.

“The best hamburgers and ribs I get are from Big Dog Grill with Young Men Olympians over on the corner right off of Martin Luther King. The best shrimp fried rice I get is from the guy who does it on Simon Bolivar and Washington,” Thomas said on Gambit’s podcast. “I don’t ever want to lose that.”

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