Of course, that’s nothing new for
Landrieu, who carries about him a fantastic obtuseness when it comes to doing
what matters most for New Orleans. This is the guy, after all, who has spends
rhetorical capital and publicity trying to take down monuments because some see
them as symbols of racial oppression, a removal which would cost millions of
dollars that the city doesn’t have (although, ironically, one
such target’s object of commemoration actually preached racial reconciliation),
rather than to address the city’s crime rate (undoubtedly exacerbated by Landrieu’s
acquiescence to New Orleans acting as a “sanctuary city”). Then, when Sen. David Vitter calls
him on it, he tries to link Vitter to racial animus.
On the matter of crime he also
enjoys picking fights with another Lincolnesque statesman, Orleans Parish Sheriff
Marlin Gusman, who faces a court order to reduce his prison population. While
New Orleans must pay for its prisoners, Gusman decides whether to take some state
prisoners that balloon the prisoner census but who bring in compensation. That
cost would increase if city prisoners would have to be located elsewhere.
Landrieu petitioned
the state to intervene and threatened a suit if the state kept housing its
prisoners at OPP. With its silence, the Department of Corrections basically
told Landrieu to go pound sand.
Of course, with a murder
rate about four times the average for a city its size and much higher per capita than almost any central city
in the country – and that rate swinging back up after years in decline – and overall
violent crime rate continuing a trend upwards, better policing could stem
the number of city offenders headed to OPP. But that is hampered by reductions
in force to the New Orleans Police Department that could be stemmed by more
resources committed to it. Embarrassingly for Landrieu, state
taxpayers had to pick up the tab for policing the Vieux Carre for a few months
earlier this year, lest the city’s lifeblood, tourism, have its image
tarnished. And that was after a voluntary patrolling effort organized by
entrepreneur Sidney Torres as matters had gotten so far out of hand. Meanwhile,
other areas of the city see no such relief.
It’s not the only time Landrieu has
sucked from other governments. He continues to get state taxpayers to pony up
for health clinics even though the city
opened an unneeded hospital in New Orleans East when beds increased in
nearby Chalmette and across the canal at the new University Medical Center
(largely paid for by the state). State and federal dollars, not local
governments’, pay (with fares) for the Regional
Transit Authority’s operations and capital items, which
as a result has ended up attenuating bus service that makes the city less
business-friendly, which then eventually leads to less economic activity and
tax revenues. With a majority of five appointees on its board, Landrieu
controls RTA policy.
Naturally enough, Landrieu also
acts in other ways to discourage business activity. In addition to the city’s Byzantine
maze of bureaucracy to hurdle, the latest
impediment is his declaration that contractors of city business hire local
residents for at least half of jobs and also 30 percent of the total
“disadvantaged” – on top of the existing requirement that 35 percent of
business must go to “disadvantaged” owners. This comes on the heels
of putting into ordinance the ridiculous “living wage” notion that deliberately
misprices labor contribution and only serves to inflate costs to taxpayers and to
depress economic development.
These kinds of actions set the
background for why Landrieu, as the city’s chief executive, got
hit with the contempt ruling last week. In essence, decades ago the city
stopped paying for some vacation time and salary increases of firefighters
which, with interest, inflated to nearly $150 million. Courts consistently have
ruled against the city in its trying not to pay, although the latest handling
the case has said, with the firefighters’ assent, the roughly $75 million accumulated
without interest would suffice as long as it was paid out fairly expeditiously.
Landrieu has refused with multiple
attempts to make realistic offers on this account. Further, as a petulant
bargaining strategy, he withheld about $30 million worth of the city’s
obligated pay into the troubled New
Orleans Fire Fighter and Pension Relief Fund, which now also the city has
been ordered to pay. Given the past
financially irresponsible behavior of the NOFF city payments continue to
rise, to the point now they are higher than actually running the fire
department.
But political subdivision
immunity where concern over the welfare of the jurisdiction prevents anybody
from collecting provides a shield for the city to hide behind in forcing it
to pay anything, leaving only the contempt citation that has District Judge
Kern Reese threatening Landrieu with home detention every week beginning at 5
PM Friday for 48 hours, waived only at the court’s discretion. Landrieu made
sport of the decision but also indicated a forthcoming appeal coming on the
matter.
Not surprisingly, it is all a joke
to the laughing potential detainee, because with him it’s never been about
governing for all, but to satisfy certain constituencies that got him there and
the big government ideology that they share. It might become less humorous were
Reese to act as hardcore as happened in Kentucky and jail this clown, where at
least Landrieu could do some personal research on the OPP question.
But even incarceration seems
unlikely to make Landrieu change his ways to start acting responsibly in the
citizenry’s interest, abjuring from poor spending choices and wrecking economic
development, not in favor of special interests. And Democrats
seriously think he has any political future outside of New Orleans?
No comments:
Post a Comment