Mayor-Elect Moreno presents her 2026 Budget Proposal
A new Mayor(-elect) has entered the chat, and since she’s also VP of City Council, she’s getting started early on making the changes she wants to see in the 2026 Budget. Yesterday, Mayor-Elect Moreno presented an amendment to the proposed 2026 City Operating Budget. Specifically, she’s looking at changes to the General Fund, which is projected to come in smaller than last year. She’s also taking advantage of the opportunity to consolidate some City offices.
The process so far
The Cantrell Administration developed a Proposed Operating Budget from March to October of 2025. They did not hold any public meetings about the budget.
Mayor Cantrell proposed her draft budget to the City Council on October 1st. The budget revealed that $222M would need to be cut from the 2026 budget, because revenue estimations were coming in lower than initially expected. Mayor Cantrell’s team referred to this as a “30% across the board cut,” but in reality, some departments were cut less than that, and some were cut far more than that.
The City Council hosted 10 days of public budget hearings where city departments explained their budgets, and what services would be cut under the proposed cuts. City Council members, including Mayor-Elect (Councilmember At-Large) Moreno also received communications from constituents and advocates about their desired changes for the budget.
Yesterday, Mayor-Elect Moreno presented an amended proposal for the General Fund to members of the press. This proposal was primarily developed by the Transition team.
On Monday, December 1st, City Council will adopt a budget for 2026. Presumably this will be closer to Mayor-Elect Moreno’s proposal than to the Cantrell administration’s proposed budget book.
Mayor-Elect Moreno will be inaugurated on January 12th.
Has this process been normal?
Sort of. Ordinarily, the Council discusses and makes amendments to the budget before it is passed on December 1st. Usually this is done by all of the councilmembers together, and it’s compiled into a slate of amendments before the budget is adopted. Since this proposal came from the transition team (which has different staff than Moreno’s Council office), it’s unclear how much the other 6 sitting councilmembers’ requests have been considered in the Mayor-Elect’s proposal.
What changes are being proposed?
Additional Revenues
The Mayor-Elect has proposed collecting $75M in additional revenues that weren’t included in last year’s budget, including:
Collecting on $32M that the Sewerage and Water Board owes to the City of New Orleans
Using $17M of Wisner Funds
Reallocating $14.7 Million in unspent ARPA funds
Increasing Parking fines (this was proposed in the Cantrell budget) totalling $7M
$5M increase in “Collections”
She’s also proposed using $4.6M in unallocated fund balance from courts and the criminal legal system that were left over from the 2024 budget.
Program & Personnel Cuts
Moreno proposed cutting $36M worth of staffing expenses, including 36 personnel from the Mayor’s Office, 62 probationary employees who have been at the City for a short amount of time, a hiring freeze on vacant positions, and reducing pay for all City Employees (except public safety personnel) by introducing a furlough one day per pay period. This means that one day out of every 2 weeks, City staff will not be paid.
Some City programs will be terminated or consolidated, including programs operated by the Office of Youth and Families and the Office of Criminal Justice Coordination.
Increases to Overtime
Overtime made headlines this year as it was made clear that the 2025 Budget didn’t account for over $70M in overtime expenses. Over half of this cost was NOPD overtime. The City has pointed to the terrorist attack, snow storm, and higher security for the Superbowl as reasons for the spike in overtime. The media has also revealed significant mismanagement and fraud in NOPD overtime.
Mayor-Elect Moreno’s 2026 Amended Budget Proposal includes an overtime fund of $38M, which will be managed by the CAO office, instead of included in departments’ individual budgets. The majority of overtime is allocated for the NOPD ($23.5M), with allocations also made for EMS, Fire, 311/911, and Other.
What happens next?
On Monday, December 1st, the City Council will meet to discuss and vote to adopt the 2026 Budget. This will be a vote and therefore public comment will be accepted.
City Council works for you! It’s important that they that the public is paying attention.
Let’s fill the council chambers on Monday!
Monday, December 1st
10am, City Council Chambers, 1300 Perdido St.
