Attempts to distort facts don’t merely come from the top of Shreveport Mayor Keith Hightower’s Administration, they come from his underlings, too. City lobbyist Michael Wainwright affords us just such a glimpse (again) in his comments about state Sen. Max Malone’s actions regarding appointments to various state boards.
This past legislative session Malone sponsored an amended bill to bring more state control over a state body that had become a breeding ground for Hightower patronage, the Caddo-Bossier Parishes Port Commission. Wishing to reduce the weight of Shreveport control over the body (united, the city’s appointees can compel the board to do things), Malone, who has constituents equally in Caddo and Bossier Parishes, wanted to allow area legislators to nominate people to serve on the boards which then local officials could pick and also to even out the geographical representation on the board. Assisted with amendments by state Rep. Mike Powell, the bill would have.
However, Hightower loyalist Rep. Cedric Glover led the charge to stop it. Traditionally, members of the Legislature defer to others when bills deal with local matters. While area senators and Bossier House members agreed with the amended bill (as did all local government authorities except Shreveport), Glover rallied Caddo Democrats in the House to oppose it and it was defeated because of this show of area delegation disunity.
Thus, Malone prevented reappointment of two Hightower lieutenants to various boards and Lindy Broderick, lobbyist for and officer of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, to the Red River Waterway Commission. (Broderick's denial was because the Chamber did not lobby hard ennough for his bill, Malone said.) Generally nominees are approved in the Senate unless a senator from the area concerning the appointment objects, which Malone did.
This use of power by Malone irked Wainwright, who has been serving on the Port Commission about two years past his term expiration because Hightower was afraid to reappoint him (there is no senatorial check on this one; Hightower was scheduled to have the renomination vetted during yesterday's City Council meeting). Wainwright, whose thin skin has driven him to write facile parodies of leading Hightower critic Lou Gehrig Burnett’s FAX-Net Update, tries to excoriate both the Shreveport Times which supported Malone’s bill and Malone himself.
First, he presents to us a straw man argument concerning the goal of Malone’s legislation: “Any notion that transferring the authority to name commissioners to area legislators would make the board less political should now be put to rest.” Wrong: the process of selection is an entirely different matter from the operation of the board and that was not the purpose of the bill; it only intended to broaden and make more representative the political process of appointment. The selection process always will be political; that’s why a governor appoints and the Senate confirms, in the Red River Waterway Commission case for three members.
Thus, his syllogistic error moots entirely his next comment that Malone himself is being inconsistent by his using political power to block Broderick’s appointment. Again, the position taken by Malone and The Times is not what Wainwright asserts that it is, and in fact may be best summarized by words from a Times editorial: “Broadening the appointing process with legislative nominations … allows greater public scrutiny over the selection of commissioners, allowing taxpayers to consider qualifications and potential conflicts of interest.”
In short, the argument that Wainwright misses and does not address is, as The Times wrote, that the present system “opens the process to potential criticism about cronyism.” But Wainwright has even greater rhetorical folly to commit:
Apparently the senator believes only those who embrace his legislative philosophy of obstruction and negativism are entitled to lobby the legislator. Under SB 333, as proposed by Malone, two of his nominees would have been on the nine-member Port Commission. What kind of independent judgment do you think they would have been able to exercise?
Of course, what Wainwright sees as “obstruction and negativism,” which probably refers to Malone’s efforts put a brake on the building of the taxpayer-injurious publicly-owned convention center hotel, sensible citizens see protecting themselves against a city administration that disregards their best interests. And this statement shows us that if any inconsistency exists around this issue, it comes from Wainwright himself. According to him, Malone would have had some (but not sole) input into the nomination process of two of nine members corrupts the independence of the commission; but then how are we to view the fact that Hightower now has sole appointive power over five (a majority) members? On the Port Commission, what kind of independent judgment do you think Michael Wainwright can exercise?
By the tone and content of this letter, the answer is pretty clear: none. And its arguments and logic once again prove that attack dogs may make a lot of noise, but that’s all they can do.
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