The highest govt of the NOLA Enterprise Alliance, a taxpayer-funded financial growth company targeted on bringing jobs and corporations to Orleans Parish, has resigned simply 9 months after taking the helm of the group.
Norman Barnum — who was the company’s chief monetary officer after which interim CEO earlier than being named to the place completely final July — submitted his resignation Friday. He had been on paid go away since December, data present.
His govt vice chairman, Jeanette Weiland, who had been with the group generally known as NOLABA since 2018, has additionally resigned.
Each declined to touch upon the circumstances round their departures, as did a spokesperson for the 13-year-old group.
The shakeup comes simply weeks after Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration inked a brand new three-year, $100,000-a-year cope with GNO Inc., the 10-parish regional financial growth company, to market town to website selectors and companies.
GNO Inc. has carried out these financial growth features for town for greater than a decade. However up to now, its contracts and its checks got here from NOLABA, which acted as town’s financial growth arm.
Now, the cash for GNO Inc. is coming immediately from Metropolis Corridor, bypassing NOLABA. Additionally, beneath the brand new association, GNO Inc. will report its quarterly progress to the Cantrell administration — to not NOLABA, as up to now.
It’s not solely clear why the Cantrell administration appears to be relegating NOLABA to a extra minor function, on condition that Cantrell’s chief administrative officer, Gilbert Montano, has been the NOLABA board chairman for the reason that mayor appointed him to the place in 2018.
Nevertheless it raises questions on who’s guiding town’s financial growth technique.
Montano and a spokesman for the mayor’s workplace didn’t return calls looking for remark.
A profitable observe report?
When the New Orleans Enterprise Alliance was based in 2010, the concept was to present the enterprise neighborhood a larger function in crafting town’s financial growth technique, based on those that have been instrumental in founding the group.