NEW ORLEANS — A beleaguered nonprofit Mayor LaToya Cantrell formed to pay for some of her signature social welfare programs is in the process of shutting down and has returned more than $1 million in public money to the city.
Forward Together New Orleans was subpoenaed by the New Orleans Inspector General’s Office last year after the City Council questioned two contracts Cantrell signed with FTNO last spring, sending almost $1.1 million in city money to the charity she founded in 2019.
The return of that money means two key programs – a job training program for at-risk youth and a gun-violence prevention effort – can resume under new fiscal leadership after a six-month paused caused by concerns over FTNO’s spending and allegations of mismanagement.
In April 2022, Cantrell and FTNO’s executive director at the time, Shaun Randolph, signed a formal agreement granting FTNO $568,000 in city money to run a gun-violence intervention program and $505,310.40 for the city’s Job 1 Earn and Learn program.
Earn and Learn provided stipends and job training to at-risk youth. After WWL-TV reported those funds were frozen in response to the inspector general’s subpoena, Cantrell reacted at a news conference by saying this reporter was getting “in between that young person and that stipend that they deserve and they're putting in the work to receive.”
The gun-violence program was run on the city’s behalf for years by the Urban League. FTNO was supposed to take over that role in 2023 by paying a crisis-response team to meet with shooting victims at crime scenes and at the hospital in an effort to prevent retaliation. But in October, the city’s finance director, Norman White, asked FTNO to return the money for both programs.
All $1,063,410.40 was returned to the city on Jan. 30, Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño said. The city signed a new agreement with Total Community Action to serve as fiscal agent for the Earn and Learn program last week, allowing that program to resume, Montaño said.
The $505,310.40 portion for that workforce development program came from the city’s Wisner Trust, which is also tied up in civil litigation. Orleans Civil District Judge Kern Reese froze payments from that trust while the City Council battles with Cantrell over who controls hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property and tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues generated by the trust.
The City Council, however, already approved spending the Wisner Funds to resume the Earn and Learn program in December, and Reese gave his approval too.
Montaño said the city is still seeking a new fiscal agent to resume the gun-violence prevention program, which originally received $216,018 from the city’s general fund and $351,982 from Wisner funds. The Cantrell Administration plans to ask Reese to approve the portion from the disputed trust as soon as a new fiscal agent is hired.
“Once the fiscal agents are established and the court blesses it, they will continue to move forward with those important programs,” Montaño said.
Forward Together New Orleans was the name of Cantrell’s transition team and inaugural fund when she was elected in 2017 and inaugurated to her first term in 2018. The political entity was then converted into an independent charity called the Mayor’s Fund in 2019.
It was supposed to support programs for any mayor of New Orleans, not just Cantrell. But Randolph complained to the inspector general and City Council that Cantrell’s political campaign staff continued to be involved in FTNO operations and still had access to FTNO banking records and email accounts well into his tenure as executive director.
The board fired Randolph in August, accusing him of going “rogue.” Randolph claimed the board members had cycled off the board before they fired him. He created a new FTNO website, filed new corporate documents and kept trying to spend FTNO’s money even after he was fired.
WWL-TV found Randolph was simultaneously running other nonprofit programs across the country. The founder of a Florida charity also alleged Randolph tried to spend that entity’s money after he’d been fired there.
The FTNO board -- Kathleen Kennedy, dean of Xavier University College of Pharmacy, and Dr. Eric Griggs, a community health physician -- sued Randolph. Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott ruled in favor of the board members and ordered Randolph to relinquish all claims to running FTNO.
After the IG subpoenaed financial records and emails, Kennedy and Griggs said they would dissolve FTNO. That process, including paying vendors and reconciling accounts, is expected to take most of this year.
