Sheriff Susan Hutson needs a tax renewal, or risks losing a large chunk of her budget
By Joseph Cranney
Source: The Times-Picayune | Nola.com
April 9, 2025
Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson is asking voters in the May municipal elections to renew a 10-year-old tax that provides a significant chunk of the budget for her overcrowded and understaffed jail.
Hutson has been attempting to raise more money for the jail since she took office in 2022. However, those efforts have largely been blocked by the New Orleans City Council, or by voters who dealt her an embarrassing defeat at the polls when Hutson asked for a tax increase two years ago.
This time, Hutson is requesting renewal of a tax that’s helped fund operations at the jail since 2014. That means voters’ taxes won’t go up, unlike Hutson’s 2023 proposal to double the rate of a separate tax her office collects.
And this time, a large portion of Hutson’s budget is at stake.
Her office projects the tax would continue collecting around $13.1 million a year, or roughly 20% of OPSO’s operating budget. The amount the department actually nets would likely be slightly lower after collection fees and debt payments, however.
Hutson says the jail needs the money to fend off violence, protect deputies and provide better care for inmates who are mentally ill. All are core tenets of the jail’s federally monitored decade-old consent decree, which mandates a host of reforms.
The latest measure will appear as Proposition No. 1 on the May 3 ballot in New Orleans, with a stated purpose of “providing additional funding for the operation, maintenance and upkeep of jails and related facilities.” If voters approve the tax, it’d be renewed for another decade.
Though Hutson has beaten back controversy for much of her first term, and is in the early months of a reelection campaign that has already drawn three opponents, the funding request is unlikely to prove politically contentious.
Two of Hutson’s opponents, former New Orleans Police Officer Michelle Woodfork and 2nd City Court Constable Edwin Shorty, both said they support the millage renewal, calling it a “critical” and “obvious” need for a strapped department, respectively.
Her third opponent, former Criminal District Court Judge Julian Parker, said he had concerns about OPSO’s finances and questioned whether the community would agree to continuing to prop up the department.
The tax would help “avoid saddling the City with a substantial new budget obligation,” while OPSO fights to comply with its federal mandates, BGR wrote in its 24-page report.
Because Hutson’s request is a continuation of funding, and not a tax increase, she said through a spokesperson that results from this ballot question ought to look different than 2023, when her proposed increase was defeated by an astounding 91% of the vote.
“Sheriff Hutson is confident this renewal will be received differently because this is not a request for new funding or an expansion — it’s a renewal of existing funding that voters have supported in the past,” spokesperson Casey McGee said.
‘Mini city’
Hutson calls the Orleans Justice Center a “mini city,” a massive complex of lockups, office buildings and warehousing space, about the size of 10 football fields.
For the past year it has housed around 1,500 inmates, who require round-the-clock access to food, water, clothing, bedding, toiletries and medicine.
During a tour of the jail’s facilities Tuesday, officers said the jail cycles through four palettes of toilet paper and as many as 500 mattresses a month, all kept at an on-site warehouse.
Jeworski Mallett, the jail’s chief of corrections, pointed to the work of the jail’s 80-person medical staff, who he said “probably does as much work as the largest hospital in New Orleans.”
The team sees as many as 35 patients a day who need help managing chronic health issues, in addition to walk-ins and emergencies. They hand out about 10,000 doses of medicine — around 10 doses, per inmate — a day, Mallett said.
On the fritz
Daily maintenance is another issue, Hutson said as a group loaded into a freight elevator. An aide mentioned that the elevator was on the fritz. “They just came and installed a part this morning,” said Sgt. Sharlene Pouncey, manager of the jail’s massive kitchen.
“See,” Hutson said. “All of this stuff has to work, too.”
Inside one of the jail’s residential wings Tuesday, heavy equipment crowded the common area and power cords dragged across floors marked with peeling tiles. The room smelled like fresh paint.
Crews had just finished work installing meshing along the second floor, aimed at preventing inmates who want to harm themselves from trying to jump.
Hutson outspent her department’s maintenance budget by around $3.3 million last year dealing with issues such as this. OPSO expects maintenance costs to overrun around $3.8 million this year.
The expenses add up. The project installing security meshing, for one pod, cost around $145,000, Hutson said.
Doing it for the whole jail could cost as much as $4 million, she said.
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