Council members at odds on Entergy regulation contracts

Every year the New Orleans City Council awards contracts worth millions of dollars to the lawyers, engineers and accountants who work with it in regulating Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana.

Some of the consultants have worked for the council for more than 20 years.

Their contracts, the largest doled out by the council, total more than $6 million this year. The regulated companies reimburse the council for the consultants' bills, using money they get from customers.

Councilwoman Shelley Midura has been looking for a cheaper solution, but as this week's council meeting showed, some of her colleagues are resisting a change.

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and Cynthia Willard-Lewis, for instance, say the consultants' work has saved customers billions of dollars on their electricity and gas bills and there is no reason to jettison them for the sake of saving a few million dollars. Being penny-wise, they argue, could be pound-foolish.

Midura says other consultants or even city employees perhaps could do the work just as well. If there is a cheaper way to achieve similar results, the council should take it, she says.

The argument is not new.

In 1993, the watchdog Alliance for Affordable Energy charged that the council's Utility Committee and its consultants had run up almost $500,000 in unnecessary expenses, including first-class plane tickets, posh hotel rooms and lavish meals.

Then-Councilman Joseph Giarrusso defended the expenses, saying the consultants had delivered $3.8 billion in savings to customers over 10 years by avoiding rate increases. The disputed $500,000, Giarrusso said, was "a very small price to pay for a service rendered to the ratepayers of this city."

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