Dozens of items on any given agenda were introduced weeks, months, even years ago, and still have not been voted on. A plain-language guide to the label that tells you an item is standing in line.

By Kim M. Braud | September 28, 2026

Scroll through a New Orleans City Council agenda and you will notice something odd about the dates. An item on the September 3, 2026 agenda was introduced on September 21, 2023. Others carry dates from early 2025. They are not mistakes. They are items that have been lying over.

If you have never followed the Council closely, "lying over" sounds like insider shorthand. It is simpler than it looks, and once you can spot it, a long agenda starts to make sense.

What "lying over" actually means

To lie over is to wait. An item that is lying over has been formally introduced at a Council meeting but has not yet been finally acted on. It sits in the gap between introduction and a final vote, carried from one meeting to the next until the Council takes it up, sets it aside, or lets it expire.

You will see the label right in the item's heading: MOTION (LYING OVER), or RESOLUTION (LYING OVER), followed by its number. Beneath it, an annotation gives the date the matter was introduced. The distance between that date and the meeting you are looking at is how long the item has been waiting.

Lying over is the waiting room of city lawmaking. An item has been introduced, but the Council is not finished with it.

The six-day rule that started it

The phrase comes from a requirement written into the city's Home Rule Charter, and it exists to slow lawmaking down on purpose.

Under the Charter, a proposed ordinance must lie over at least six calendar days, counted from the day after it is introduced, before the Council can finally consider it. In plain terms, the Council cannot introduce an ordinance and pass it the same day. There has to be a pause, so that members and the public have time to see a measure before it can become law. An amendment along the way does not restart that clock, unless it adds genuinely new subject matter.

When the wait is over and an ordinance is called for final passage, it is read by title, and it passes only on the affirmative vote of a majority of all members, which on the seven-seat Council means at least four. Each member's yes or no is recorded by name.

That six-day minimum is the strict, legal meaning of lying over, and it applies to ordinances, the instruments that actually become law. On the agenda, though, the label is used more broadly. Motions and resolutions carry the "lying over" tag too, to mark that they were introduced at an earlier meeting and are being carried forward. Ordinances awaiting final passage are usually shown a little differently, by their introduction date rather than the explicit label, but they are lying over in the same sense.

How to spot it on a real agenda

Look at the September 3, 2026 agenda.

Motion M-26-40, a Civil Service pay plan amendment, is marked "(lying over)" and was introduced on January 27, 2026. More than seven months later, it was still waiting for a Council vote.

A pair of resolutions on a Restoration Tax Abatement for a Dryades Street property, R-26-9 and R-26-10, were introduced on January 8, 2026, and appear again lying over, with a request to push them to October. One approves the application, one denies it. The Council has kept both alive rather than choosing.

Then there are the long-timers. Motions M-23-426 and M-23-427, both dealing with short-term rental rules, were introduced on September 21, 2023, and are still on the September 3, 2026 agenda. Nearly three years, lying over.

Now compare all of those to the items introduced on the day of the meeting itself, September 3. None of them carry the "lying over" label. They are new business. The label is the tell that separates what the Council just took up from what it has been sitting on.

The rule sets a minimum wait of six days. The agenda holds items that have been waiting for years.

Lying over is not the same as being deferred

The two get confused, and they are related, but they are not the same. Lying over is a status: the item is pending and carried forward. A deferral is an action: a specific request to move an item's consideration to a named future date. An item can simply lie over, waiting its turn, or it can be actively deferred, as several on this agenda were, to a set meeting like October 1. Deferral is its own concept, and worth an explainer of its own.

How long can something lie over?

Not forever, at least not by default. The agenda states the rule in plain sight: a legislative instrument is postponed indefinitely and dropped from future agendas if it is not acted on within 120 days of its introduction or first appearance.

But that clock can be reset. A councilmember can ask that a matter be set for hearing, or bring a postponed item back onto a later agenda. That is how measures introduced in 2023 and early 2025 are still on the September 3, 2026 agenda. Lying over has a nominal limit, and members have the tools to keep an item there well past it.

For the reader, the practical takeaway is small but useful. A "lying over" item is live but unfinished. Check the introduction date next to it, and you will know whether the Council picked it up last month or has been carrying it, unresolved, for years.

Verify it yourself: the September 3, 2026 regular agenda is posted in the New Orleans City Council document archive at council.nola.gov. The six-day lie-over requirement appears in Article III of the Home Rule Charter, in the Code of Ordinances at library.municode.com.

Kim M. Braud is the Founder & Editor of Evans Cutchmore Press, an independent newsroom covering Louisiana and the Gulf South. Her reporting focuses on government accountability, infrastructure, business, culture, and the public policies that shape communities.

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