what the heck is a MAYOR doing going to France and Switzerland (with staff and security)
Hiding from black people?
Maybe the Mayor wanted to make a cash deposit in Switzerland so the IRS couldn’t find a paper trail. Need to check the banks in those two countries to see if the Mayor has accounts.
As I recall, she was exploiting a recent trend involving "sister cities" - signing of proclamations, exchanging of cultural gifts, etc. (in Switzerland, the city is Ascona - on the southern Swiss border with Italy). Like New Orleans, Ascona hosts some sort of annual jazz music festival... so promoting tourism seems to have been the selling point for the trip. I assume the destination in France was similar, possibly a follow-up visit to a "sister city" already established by Mitch Landrieu.
I've noticed that these trips are always one-way. Mayors of U.S. cities set up these "relationships" as excuses for overseas travel, but you rarely hear of any foreign officials traveling to the U.S. for similar reasons.
Of course, the greatest irony is that New Orleans tourism lives or dies based on the perceived safety level of the city. In that regard, Miz Cantrell has been acting to kill tourism since she took office.