Thirteen staffers in two New Orleans municipal departments received pink slips this month under Mayor-elect Helena Moreno’s plan to balance the city’s budgetthe first of multiple payroll cuts that are expected to claw back $37 million in savings.
Moreno’s transition team on Dec. 12 notified all four employees in the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families and all nine staffers in the Office of Criminal Justice Coordination that their jobs were ending after Moreno takes office Jan. 12, transition and City Hall staffers said this week.
“As Mayor-elect Moreno prepares to take office, we have been reviewing unclassified positions within City Hall. At this time, we will not be extending an offer to you for continued employment in your current role in the new administration,” the letter read.
The move follows Moreno’s previous announcement that she would shift oversight of the youth and families and criminal justice departments to other city agencies. But it was unclear until recently if employees in those departments would lose their jobs. The offices are led by Asya Howlett and Tenisha Stevens.
Todd Ragusa, a spokesperson for the transition, said that incoming Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Michael Harrison will oversee criminal justice coordination, while incoming Deputy Mayor Dr. Jennifer Avegno will manage youth and family programs in the city’s Health and Human Services division.
“Crime, health, family stability and opportunity are deeply interconnected, and this reorganization reflects that reality,” Ragusa said.
Ragusa added that the move also reflects Moreno’s “vision for a more coordinated city government focused on outcomes rather than silos.”
It is merely the first round of layoffs, with more termination notices expected to go out by Jan. 6, he said. All told, 36 unclassified, at-will employees and 62 employees who have been with the city for less than a year will be let go under Moreno’s spending plan.
That plan also calls for furloughs of 724 nonpublic safety or essential services employees who would lose a day of pay each pay period. The city will also enact a hiring freeze on 134 vacant positions. The city will save $37.4 million from the moves.
Moreno is also relying on $74 million in new revenue from the city’s Sewerage and Water Board, unspent federal grants and from other sources.
In late November, the mayor-elect said her 2026 proposed budget would avoid a projected $222 million deficit and would be a more “surgical approach” to necessary cuts than would Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s proposed spending plan, which called for a 30% reduction across nearly all city departments.
The City Council, where Moreno is vice president, adopted her proposal Dec. 1 despite Cantrell’s strong objections.
One of the two departments so far affected, the youth and families office, was created by Cantrell at the start of her tenure. The other, the criminal justice office, has been housed in the mayor’s office for decades, working to improve public safety in the criminal and juvenile legal system.
In addition to staff layoffs, Moreno’s budget would cut $740,000 for the youth and families office’s flagship Pathways Youth Internship Program, which provides internships for 20 to 30 at-risk youth.
Another $400,000 will be cut from the Criminal Justice Coordination office’s Evening Reporting Center program, an after-school alternative to detention that serves around two dozen students.
It’s unclear what additional programs would be cut from those offices.
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