A: His lips are moving.
While there are many really, really
bad lawyer jokes out there, that could be the worst of them. Unfortunately, one
member of the Louisiana bar appears to be living up to that stereotype as
taxpayers get fleeced for some high
living off the hog by the Louisiana
State Law Institute, an appendage of the Legislature that has acted as the official
law revision commission, law reform agency, and legal research agency of
Louisiana since the 1930s.
I write “appears” stereotypical because
it’s possible the guy in question, the longtime executive director of the
organization William Crawford, simply may have horrendous research skills –
although that seems highly doubtful given his considerable academic
accomplishments (having been a law professor at Louisiana State University’s
Paul M. Hebert School of Law for nearly half a century). That’s because he was
asked by a Baton Rouge Advocate
reporter about the Institute’s penchant for having meetings in New Orleans,
even though it is headquartered at LSU, which have cost more than $500,000 over
the past three years; specifically, why didn’t meetings of its council, which has over 100 members,
occur where it is housed? About a third of its members live in the greater New
Orleans area, while almost as many live in the Baton Rouge area.
His answer was that they got a
great deal at the Vieux Carre’s Montelone Hotel, with rooms a bargain at roughly
$300 (before tax) a night, and cheap valet parking running only $40 a day.
Which means he either can’t accurately price a hotel room to save his life or is
avoiding the truth on this issue, because significantly less expensive
accommodations exist in Baton Rouge. As a matter of personal experience, when
my wife served on the Louisiana Developmental
Disabilities Council, which required not only her presence but mine and a
nurse’s, the Council booked us two rooms at the Baton Rouge meeting hotel which
ranged between $90-95 a night. As the LSLI will reimburse up to $300 for a
night or two nights for $450, that still is more for a single person or couple
than it is paying for an extra room for my wife’s medical needs. And we always
got free parking.
It’s not like it’s impossible to
find meeting space in Baton Rouge for over 100 people – although, typically,
less than half of the council shows up at the meetings with about three-quarters
of them come from outside the greater New Orleans area and, interestingly, the
largest single contingent being from Baton Rouge itself – as in the aftermath
of the hurricane disasters of 2005 for a few years they met on the LSU campus,
which also has lodging and free parking. This choice also saved on the several
hundred dollars now shelled out per meeting for space, and likely also cost
less in terms of aggregate mileage expenses, given the more central statewide location
of Baton Rouge compared to New Orleans.
Travel expenses only make up about
a tenth of the LSLI budget, and legislators – among the council’s members (by
virtue of committee chairmanships) are state Reps. Neil Abramson, Jeff Arnold, Nancy Landry,
and Joe Lopinto,
and state Sens. Dan Claitor, Bob Kostelka, J.P. Morrell, and Ben Nevers – haven’t seemed concerned
about saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on these by making
meeting on the LSU campus permanent, or at the very least reimburse only to the
Baton Rouge hotel rate ($97
per night for this fiscal year). They should be, for all the whining some
do about how higher education needs more money in this year’s budget, it
couldn’t hurt to have that excess travel money not only go to higher education,
but also to throw business LSU’s way with the amount retained paying it to
house the meetings.
Of course, Crawford’s response set
was constrained in that he acts as a mouthpiece for those who directly employ
him, and undoubtedly council members from across the state (and the couple of
out-of-state members) think the waters better in New Orleans than in Baton
Rouge for their half-dozen or so trips a year (whether the council should meet
that often and needs a minimum of 60 members by statute are other matters). But
it would do well for legislators permitting this extravagance to remember who
hires them, the people, and it’s the people’s money they’re spending, not the LSLI’s
nor theirs.
Yes, the amount of money saved may
not even amount to my annual professor’s salary, but even that chickenfeed total
means something when this year higher education is scheduled to get around $200
million less than last year. In these times of fiscal stress, if legislators
aren’t blowing hot air about their distress at cutting services, they would be
saving everywhere they can, including by making the atmosphere surrounding LLI
meetings less vacation-like and more business-like.
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