Taxpayer cuts shouldn't threaten LA public media

Don’t worry about the recent recission of federal funding for public broadcasting insofar as Louisiana Public Broadcasting goes, as if you couldn’t tell from comments made by the organization itself.

Of course, before the Republican Congress triggered the cuts starting Oct. 1, there were all sorts of panicked howls coming from the political left about how the country would fall apart with the billion or so bucks missing from coffers of public broadcasting. This reaction was, or course, disingenuous, such as the argument that rural areas would be cut adrift from emergency warnings when there exist so many other less-costly way it could be done, and without the relentless liberal bias effused through public broadcasting (most recently displayed through woke older social media posts and statements made by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s head and blog posts made last year by a former senior employee outing the virulent leftism within the organization).

Naturally, this crisis on the left isn’t shared by the American people. A recent survey showed nearly half of respondents thought the federal government shouldn’t use taxpayer resources to fund public broadcasting, while only just over a quarter thought it should.

Closed primary hastening GOP registrant takeover

The reintroduction of semi-closed party primary federal elections in Louisiana is hastening the registration decline of state Democrats, with the historical antecedent telling us the other major party the Republicans benefits differently at different times but on course to take over as they state’s largest party to match their overwhelming electoral success.

July figures for voting registrations show Democrats with about a 46,000 lead with 36.7 percent of registrants over the GOP with 35.2 percent. Consider that 21 years ago Democrats more than doubled up Republicans and had a lead approaching a million potential voters, having back then 56.1 percent of all registrants.

However, the state keeps records not published on its website of a subset of active voters or those who haven’t missed two consecutive federal election cycles. John Couvillon of JMC Analytics and Polling, a political research firm, obtained the master file of voters from the state and calculated among active voters Republicans actually now lead in registrations by around 38,000.

Time to send packing Orleans sanctuary sheriff

If you’re going down, you might as well do it clinging to your beliefs as erroneous and contrafactual as they may be, Democrat Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson looks eager to prove.

Hutson has been little more than disastrous in her role mainly of running the Orleans Parish Prison and overseeing those prisoners when off the premises. First coming to fame for monitoring as established by referendum the New Orleans Police Department for irregularities, she has a history very much for a soft on crime approach, although the sheriff’s office doesn’t directly engage in public law enforcement.

A surprise winner over the long-time Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office incumbent in 2021 elections, since then she has embroiled herself in controversy after controversy. These include  opposing a jail expansion that the courts ultimately ordered her to undertake, paying lavishly during Carnival festivities for senior staff and in a manner which violated state and federal law (which she called “misogynistic”), proposing a ballot measure raising taxes hugely only to see it gain support of fewer than 10 percent of voters, suffering a mass jailbreak that appeared a consequence of lax procedures (which she blamed on lack of funds even though the OPSO is sitting on $14 million in reserves), and, perhaps most poetically, gigged by federal jail monitors for deteriorating conditions. Most recently, she was held in contempt of court for failing to provide deputies as required to oversee prisoner courtroom activities on Saturdays.

Term limits bills set parameters for Bossier

If the dynamics present at the Louisiana Legislature this past session remain, the Bossier Parish Police Jury may be a step closer to term limits, thanks to a forthcoming special election.

No parish without a home rule charter has term limits, and among those only Lincoln Parish by statute is authorized to seek them (the allowed referendum never has been called). But Bossier Parish Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh tried to give two parishes a chance to have their police juries potentially subjected to term limits in this past session. One bill, SB 103, would have given Sabine Parish residents a chance to vote on whether to impose a prospective three-term limit prior to the next round of parish elections, while SB 113 originally would have done the same retrospectively for De Soto at some indeterminate date. Seabaugh represents the southern half of De Soto and all of Sabine.

The De Soto Police Jury previously on a couple of occasions had voted on the issue, most recently at the beginning of last year where a narrow majority resolved to ask for the citizen vote on term limits applied to them. By contrast, the Sabine Police Jury had just a couple of its members articulating a desire for limits with the remainder in opposition, but a significant portion of the public voiced support, as reflected in communications with Seabaugh and through a local radio talk show. The Jury has been a consistent magnet for criticism in recent years, featuring its insistence on raising taxes, citizens rejecting tax propositions several times at the ballot box, accusations of wasteful spending especially on a new library, ineptness in dealing with grant monies, and calls for resignations of if not recall petitions filed against multiple jurors.

Monroe Council games continue with tax hike

The Monroe City Council majority Democrats want to raise Monrovians’ taxes in their quest not only to secure reelection but also to push independent Mayor Friday Ellis out of office.

 

At its last meeting, the Council failed to ratify property tax rates for this year. Typically, local governments in Louisiana do this in June and July, which then gives parish assessors time to calculate and send out assessment notices and go through the appeal process before making the rolls final by November, with property owners’ payments due by the end of the year.

 

Instead, Council Democrats Rodney McFarland, Verbon Muhammad, and Juanita Woods rejected the measure, which provokes a small crisis. Instead, they wanted to raise rates using the “roll forward” option. That requires a public hearing that has to follow public notice laws, meaning it will be at least a month before that can occur. This delays considerably the process and means that final notices will be late. The process cannot start until the Jul. 22 meeting.

 

Muhammad, noting the Council had previously continued a vote on millages, complained that the Ellis Administration didn’t submit to the Council an agenda item to roll forward, claiming the majority’s preference to raise taxes had been articulated previously. Of course, while typically ordinances come from administration, councilors may place their own on the agenda.

 

Although Monroe collects several different property taxes, almost all are for discrete purposes and almost all are at their adjusted maximum millage, which is the rate to which the Council could raise by a simple majority. Conspicuously, the one millage that both is general and not at its adjusted maximum is the general alimony at 10.18 mills presently.

 

Muhammad made vague mention of spending he claimed was needed and alleged the hike would pour another $1 million into city coffers. That seems consistent with a raise to the maximum authorized millage, but which requires a two-thirds majority that Republicans Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack seem unlikely to approve. Boosting to the adjusted maximum, or 11.99 mills, would raise around $828,000. However, if the maximum authorized, or 12.35 mills (and most of the others have a slightly higher maximum authorized than adjusted maximum), is not attained by the end of the assessment period, then it cannot be reached again unless quadrennial reassessment reveals an overall decrease in city property values.

 

The Council majority could push through the lower hike, but then as an ordinance Ellis could veto it and with the minority’s support sustain that. Yet this would launch a game of chicken that threatens to disrupt entirely the city’s ability to collect property taxes for this year.

 

Throughout, the majority seemed blithely unconcerned that they wanted the city to swipe extra money from the citizenry. Its thinking is entirely political: increase programmatic spending disproportionately in their districts — to their constituents and to related special interests — especially as, because theirs overall have lower property values than the minority’s districts, owners in their districts would pay disproportionately less of the increase.

 

Meanwhile, in 2028 citizens might take out their vexation over the hike on Ellis as mayor, the city’s most visible politician. It’s the same bad faith the majority has practiced over the past year, exemplified again in the meeting when the Council passed without any councilor comment a measure to match a state grant to improve Jackson Street. This came after the prior meeting when McFarland in particular extensively hinted at sinister motives behind Ellis pursuing this matter of about a dozen years’ standing and surreptitiously despite the administration’s above-board informative efforts.

 

That what was so controversial one meeting becomes nothing worthy of discussion the next again demonstrates it’s all political theater with this crowd, that appears to treat Ellis’ mayoralty as an illegitimate aberration standing in the way of its redistributive politics.

 

New budget energy policy to drop LA power rates

Contrary to the fevered fantasy of leftist catastrophic anthropogenic global warming acolytes, the federal government’s shift to a realistic energy policy will result in lower overall payments for power by Louisianans if not also greater economic development.

 The recent federal budget bill that made profound changes in taxing and spending policy included among other things the imminent end of subsidies for wind and solar sources, effective elimination of fuel standards for vehicles that will encourage fossil fuel usage, and the ability of individual states to leverage those standards higher. This of course has created a panic attack on the left, with a particularly useless Democrat on the Louisiana Public Service Commission pontificating that the discouragement of the renewable sources will doom consumers to higher rates, under the facile assumption that the lower costs utilities paid for renewable generation will go higher without taxpayers footing part of the bill and that markets don’t prevail.

 

Of course, in that view there’s no consideration of those very taxpayers that include Louisianans who as a result of the budget reconciliation will see both permanently lower taxes and a reallocation of spending that better matches the genuine priorities of the people. And the supposition of higher-priced retail prices differs from assessments of energy policy experts generally, who note historical data show a distinct positive correlation between electricity pricing and proportion of power generated by solar and wind sources. They also note the inherent dishonesty in having hidden in subsidies the extra amount that citizens pay for greater wind and solar usage rather than out in the open in the form of higher charged rates.

Mapping case may add to LA policy leadership

It looks increasingly likely that Louisiana again will lead the policy-making field, this time through a decision on the U.S. Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais.

 For decades seldom has the state participated in ground-breaking policy, far more often lagging the field. But that trend has started to reverse as of late, beginning in 2022 when Louisiana became the first state to require age verification to access sexually-explicit web sites. Other states followed and some of their laws, similar to Louisiana’s, met with court challenges. But, last month the Court rejected one setting a precedent for other.

 

Then in 2023 the state, pioneering with a few others, passed a law that required segregating of borrowing in public libraries of books with adult thematic material. Library systems had to set up procedures to distinguish minors and for those books to require parental assent for minors to access these.

Put LA public defense board out of misery

This space earlier this year mused whether Louisiana needed a board of appointees to oversee public defense. It appears recent events  reveal it doesn’t really matter as it seems largely irrelevant.

This week, the Louisiana Public Defender Oversight Board met to decide whether five of the state’s district public defenders had lost their jobs at the end of last month. The Board itself had just turned a year old, having been overhauled with many of its functions transferred to the state public defender Remy Starns. However, it retained its powers over financial matters, including contracting with DPDs.

Starns, originally appointed by Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards then reappointed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, after its new formation that saw several new members as a result of its changeover, brought to the Board a changed salary plan designed to address the challenging funding environment inherent to the state’s method of providing public defense, largely dependent as it is on contingent local sources. It rejected that, because some substantial salary cuts would have occurred.

Unwise to have LA pay for weight loss benefit

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry made the right move for taxpayers when he vetoed a line in a bill that could have spiraled out of cost control because some active and retired state employees and public school teachers eat too much.

HB 463 was one of several money bills passed by the Legislature, this one being the annual ancillary expenses allotted to parts of state government spending from internal service or enterprise funds. He struck a single line item from it, that which would have compelled state employee coverage of semaglutide medication that can encourage weight loss as long as it didn’t cost the state money for the fiscal year.

Some took to social media to decry the decision not to cover drugs like Rybelus, Wegovy, and Ozempic. The Office of Group Benefits could have worked a deal from the manufacturers to allow for a free year’s worth, and with Louisiana having one of the highest obesity rates in the country, with that condition bringing all sorts of health problems this benefit could reduce health plan costs down the line which would translate soon into lower rates charged clients than would be otherwise.

Independence Day, 2025

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Friday, Jul. 4 being Independence Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.