Top cop at New Orleans’ flood protection agency granted promotion, even bigger paycheck
By Alex Lubben
Source: The Times-Picayune | Nola.com
July 30, 2025
New Orleans’ regional flood protection agency has granted its police chief a promotion that comes with a large pay increase — he now has the highest salary at the agency — as Gov. Jeff Landry’s allies carry out a controversial overhaul there.
Internal documents obtained by The Times-Picayune through a public records request show that Superintendent of Police Joshua Rondeno now earns $208,000 per year, nearly twice what his predecessor made, and has taken on expanded duties. In addition to serving as police chief, Rondeno now acts as an internal auditor in the mold of the federal Department of Government Efficiency, reviewing agency spending and operations to root out what he considers inefficient expenditures.
It was not clear when Rondeno’s promotion went into effect. He was hired last year at a salary of $160,000. He previously served as the chief of the University of New Orleans Police Department.
Rank-and-file police officers at the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East have also received higher pay hikes than other workers, the documents show, signaling a new emphasis on policing at the flood control agency.
His pay bump makes him one of the highest-paid public officials in the New Orleans metro area.
Rondeno now out-earns Port of New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll, who makes $175,000. Gov. Jeff Landry earns around $130,000 per year. Mayor LaToya Cantrell makes about $200,000.
“Compare me to someone who’s doing a good job,” Rondeno said in an interview. “The mayor of the City of New Orleans is in turmoil.”
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick is one of few public officials who make more than Rondeno. She commands a nearly 900-officer department and makes $364,000 per year, according to the city’s civil service department.
Rondeno, meanwhile, oversees a 50-officer police force that is charged with keeping the region’s flood control structures safe from vandalism, providing escorts during storms, and policing New Orleans’ lakefront neighborhoods. For that work, his predecessor earned $110,000 in 2023.
But Rondeno said his responsibilities have expanded, and described his pay increase as “not a raise” but rather a “job title change and significant increase in responsibilities.”
His expanded role now includes the title of compliance officer in addition to police chief. That role involves auditing spending, monitoring vehicle use to ensure that staff are not using work vehicles for personal tasks, and generally looking for ways to save the agency money, Rondeno said.
He and outgoing board president Roy Carubba say they have saved the agency $2 million by slashing unnecessary contracts. The agency did not provide documentation that details the savings figure.
Landry announced Tuesday he was removing Carubba as board president and replacing him with Peter Vicari, a contractor from Gonzales. Vicari, who joined the board last month, said he didn’t know that Rondeno had received a raise.
Carubba had been Landry’s handpicked choice to serve as board president, but his brief tenure was tumultuous and led to board members resigning in protest. He will remain on the board.
Rondeno and Carubba sought to implement sweeping reforms at the agency in the last year. The governor has largely delegated oversight of the agency to his unofficial deputy in New Orleans, businessman Shane Guidry, who said he was not aware of Rondeno’s promotion.
Carubba and Rondeno defended the recent steps, saying they reflect positive impact at the agency.
“I’d be really disappointed if this isn’t a glowing tribute to what this man has done to improve this agency in the last year,” Carubba said.
Rondeno has taken on an outsized role at the flood agency compared to prior police chiefs. Earlier this year, Carubba sought to assign Rondeno duties that had been under the purview of the regional director, the top staff position there. That position has been vacant since Kelli Chandler resigned from the role last year.
In February, the board overrode Carubba and placed the director of engineering, Chris Humphries, in the interim regional director position.
At the time, Carubba called the board’s move a “coup.”
Raises across the agency
Rondeno isn’t the only staffer at the agency who has gotten a significant pay bump. Executive counsel Kirk Ordoyne now makes $205,000 a year, up from $177,000 last year, giving him the agency’s second-highest salary. Rondeno said that Ordoyne gets additional pay beyond his salary that makes him the highest-paid, but declined to provide additional information.
In recent years, the chief engineer at the flood protection agency has been the highest-paid employee.
Last week, Carubba hired a new regional director, Louis “Jeff” Williams, who comes to the agency from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He will be paid $230,000, Carubba said, making him the highest-paid agency employee when he starts on Monday. Chandler, the last regional director, earned $176,000.
Annual salaries for the entire agency appear to be up about $2 million year-over-year, from $14 million to $16 million, according to the agency records. The average salary rose about six percent year-over-year, and the agency’s headcount increased from 217 a year ago to 236 as of July 23.
Among the agency’s rank-and-file, cops received larger raises than the rest of the workforce. The average pay for officers, excluding Rondeno’s salary, is up about $8,000 year-over-year, from $57,000 to $65,000. Across the entire agency, salaries are up just $4,000 year-over-year.
Total spending on police salaries is up 40%, or $1 million, year-over-year.
Guidry, who helped bring Troop NOLA, a unit of the Louisiana State Police, to New Orleans to assist the city’s understaffed police force, has stressed that he hopes the flood agency’s cops will perform standard police duties, rather than exclusively protecting the levees.
“We don’t want officers watching grass grow,” he said previously.
Rebecca Mowbray, the president and CEO of the Bureau of Government Research (BGR), said the pay increases for agency police raised questions about its priorities.
“BGR had noticed this spring that the budget does include more money allocated for police,” she said. “I think the public should understand more about why these law enforcement budgets have gone up.”
Carubba emphasized that the increase in spending on salaries agency-wide was the result of eliminating contracts and bringing work in house.
For example, “by eliminating outside grass-cutting services, we’re hiring people internally,” he said.
Rondeno’s role expands
Rondeno’s new job description states that he’s responsible for audits, investigating “contracting concerns” and protecting whistleblowers, among other tasks.
Rondeno appears to have taken on some of the responsibilities assigned to the regional director despite the board’s previous opposition to his doing so. Humphries, who had been serving as interim regional director, retired at the beginning of June.
The Times-Picayune requested an internal organizational chart that the agency said was used to approve time off requests. The agency denied the records request, stating that “the public record you seek does not exist.”
Employees at the agency shared the chart with The Times-Picayune. It shows Rondeno at the top of an organizational structure, meaning that he is responsible for approving time off requests for other officials at the agency.
That’s a task that Rondeno said was previously under the purview of the regional director. Without one, that authority has fallen to him.
The internal organizational chart does not match the agency’s official, public-facing structure, which is published as part of the agency’s emergency management plan. That structure has Rondeno reporting to the board president alongside the other agency directors.
Carubba has stated repeatedly that Landry charged him with three tasks: Making sure no one floods due to storm surge, bolstering the agency’s police force, and implementing “good governance.” Guidry has described the third mandate as rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse,” echoing terms used by the federal Department of Government Efficiency.
Rondeno’s promotion, in Carubba’s view, advances those mandates.
“We are better able to do our job. Our people are more motivated,” he said. “I, as the board president, chose to give [Rondeno] that title, which is unprecedented. And I did it because our mission is so critical.”
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