Jeff Landry’s adviser wants to upend key post-Katrina reform at New Orleans flood agencies

Reprinted from The Times Picayune

• By ALEX LUBBEN | Staff writer
• Mar 6, 2025

A top adviser to Gov. Jeff Landry is leading a push to upend a key post-Katrina reform at the New Orleans area's levee authorities, drawing sharp criticism from government watchdogs who say he risks seriously harming the region's vital flood protections.
After the New Orleans area's levees crumbled during the storm 20 years ago, a constitutional amendment that voters approved overwhelmingly reformed the region’s flood control agencies. Among other changes, it created an independent committee to nominate members to the regional levee boards. Those agencies are responsible for maintaining and operating the levees and pumps that protect the city from storm surge flooding.
Now, Shane Guidry, who is not elected or appointed to any official office and serves as an adviser to the governor in an informal capacity, is recommending to lawmakers that they do away with the nominating committees. He did not specify how the nominating process would be restructured, but Landry has already reformed other state boards to give the governor more power over them.
Following the Katrina reforms, two agencies have been charged with overseeing flood protections in the New Orleans area, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and -West.
“We have sat for a year watching how our boards operate. We're watching for checks and balances on how money is being spent. We're finding that's not happening,” Guidry said. “A lot of this is happening because people get nominated to the board through a process we don't agree with.”
He referred to members of the current nominating committees as “scammers who are just out for themselves, and we’re going to put a stop to it.”
He stressed repeatedly that he and the governor are seeking to ferret out “waste, fraud and abuse,” echoing language used by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But Guidry provided no evidence of any waste or wrongdoing.
Sen. Patrick Connick (R-Marrero) said that he had not seen draft legislation yet, but confirmed that the governor’s office had approached him about introducing a bill that would reform the nominating process for positions on levee boards statewide.
Kate Kelly, a spokesperson for the governor, said she could not offer any additional details on the plans.
'Avoid experimenting with lives'The nominating committee is intended to be an independent panel that ensures that the levee authorities’ boards includes people with expertise in hydrology and engineering required to oversee the maintenance of the region’s flood control infrastructure.
In an article about the post-Katrina flood protection reforms for the New England Journal of Public Policy, Ruthie Frierson, a former real estate agent who started Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, wrote that the nominating committee was seen as crucial for boosting the public’s confidence in the levee boards.
“I think we should avoid experimenting with lives, property, and our region's future by reducing the independent local oversight that brought focus, integrity, and competence to flood protection,” she told The Times-Picayune last week, noting that 94% of New Orleanians voted in favor of the constitutional amendment that created the regional levee authority in 2006.
Good-government groups also expressed opposition to scrapping the nominating committees.
The head of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR), Steven Procopio, said he believes the nominating committee should stay in place.
“Eliminating the levee board nominating committee would be a serious mistake,” he said. “If we allow direct political appointments, we’re putting Louisiana’s flood protection system and the people who rely on it at risk."
Barry Erwin, who runs the Council for a Better Louisiana (CABL), echoed Procopio’s concerns. So did Becky Mowbray, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Bureau of Governmental Research.
“We would be concerned about any change that could increase the chances of politics entering the management of our flood protection assets,” Mowbray said.
Under the current system, PAR and CABL get to appoint one person each to the nominating committee.
Jay Lapeyre, who served as the chair of the nominating committee for 17 years, sees it as crucial to maintaining the public’s confidence in the levee board.

'This has worked beautifully'After Katrina, building confidence in the city’s flood control systems was crucial for bringing investment back to New Orleans that allowed the city to recover. A lack of confidence in the flood agency was “a truly existential threat” to New Orleans after Katrina’s levee failures, he said.
“The truth is that this has worked beautifully,” he said of the nominating committee.
Guidry's push comes as he pursues other changes at the east bank levee authority. He and his handpicked board chairman pushed the board not to hire a director for the agency, and instead allow its police chief to assume many of those duties.
That has drawn harsh pushback from other board members who, bucking Guidry and his board president, temporarily gave the director job to the agency's chief engineer and created a search committee to permanently fill the position. They warned that Guidry's reforms could cause the agency to lose its flood protection focus.
Changing the appointment process could in theory allow Landry and Guidry to pursue changes with less board opposition.
Guidry, meanwhile, has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that Lapeyre and other current members of the nominating committee have put forward board members who have wasted taxpayer funds.
“It’ll come out,” Guidry said. “Be patient.”
Lapeyre rejected the accusations, saying levee board members since Katrina have helped make New Orleans the “best protected coastal city on the Gulf or East Coasts.”