New laws too late to fix left's fatal errors

If only some parts of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s and his legislative allies’ crime package had been in place prior to this year, likely at least one more person would be alive today, along potentially with reductions in many other crimes committed.

At the end of June, a woman who worked as tour guide was found shot dead early in the morning in the Vieux Carré. The next day, New Orleans police arrested Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, 19, Jerben Albarec, 17, and Kevin Nuñez, 15 for the robbery/murder with Nuñez as the alleged triggerboy.

That unhappy circumstance reflects poorly on Democrat Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Candice Bates-Anderson’s decision-making, as Nuñez – despite his not being old enough to operate legally a vehicle – already had a record of seven counts of aggravated assault, illegal possession of a handgun, and domestic battery at his latest appearance earlier this spring. Bates-Anderson nevertheless sentenced him to home arrest and monitoring. Yet in another system failure, for some reason his ankle monitor was deactivated in May, allowing him to roam the streets that led to his alleged role in the robbery that escalated to murder.

Reforms may depoliticize future coastal plans

A faux ruckus raised over a recent reorganization of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority illustrates just how uninformed – aided naturally enough by oversimplistic if not mendacious publicity by special interests and subsequent stenography by news organizations – is the public about climate change and how it relates to the state’s management of coastal lands.

Last month, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law HB 806, which alters membership on the CPRA Board (note that the CPRA is divided into a policy-making arm, the Board, and an implementation arm, called the Authority which typically is denoted by the acronym). It removed six of the 23 and added three more.

This may be the first step in Landry’s planned overhaul of the CPRA as a whole. A transition committee of his recommended integrating it with the Department of Energy and Natural Resources. A bill to do that stalled in the past legislative session, perhaps over the perception that this attempt to make coherent a patchwork of quasi-independent entities that make coordination of conservation policy difficult instead somehow would deemphasize that function, if not degrade it.

Petition submission pressures BC establishment

It’s no accident that the collapse of Bossier City’s Charter Review Commission coincided with the successful conclusion of a citizen initiative to petition a city charter change introducing term limits. It leaves the political establishment, especially the elected officials part of it who would be devastated with subsequent enactment, clinging to lawfare as its only remote chance to derail an almost-assuredly ratification of term limits prior to next year’s city elections.

Heading into a scheduled Jun. 18 meeting after the previous meeting had seen the four Commission representatives generally favorable towards limits take advantage of two absences of establishment representatives, who were against the idea, to gain commission approval of a term limits measure like the one on the petition – three terms retroactively applied immediately – the establishment commissioners faced some tactical considerations in trying to reverse that outcome at the meeting, which would depend upon how many of their numbers they could muster. Apparently, they couldn’t maneuver enough to have presumably the last meeting of substance before forwarding all approved items to the City Council as they appeared to boycott without warning the scheduled meeting, leaving in attendance just three of the reform commissioners (one had announced previously his intended absence) and no quorum. (Determining whether the boycott was planned is now subject to a contested public records request.)

The non-meeting devolved into an acrimonious exchange between then-Chairman Preston Friedley and Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray over the agenda-setting process – an important point because what appeared on it would affect the numbers needed by the establishmentarians to try to overturn a past vote. Of particular concern to that faction was the past typical absences of one of them, Paderina Soumas, that if repeated would deprive them under most scenarios of the votes needed for the overturning.

LA judiciary could use paring, reorganization

A recent decision made by a little-known panel of elected Louisiana judges illuminates how with reorganization of the state’s judiciary taxpayers could save around $100 million annually.

Last month, the state’s Judicial Budgetary Control Board voted to give stipends in most instances representing almost 8.5 percent of a judge’s salary, out of an internal fund not dependent on taxpayer dollars that has accumulated a significant surplus, to judges on the bench as of Jul. 1. With this decision, which doesn’t appear to follow legislative intent to dole out periodically to active judges this bonus it authorized, if a judge does not serve the entire fiscal year he still receives the whole amount, even as this appears to be an unconstitutional donation of public funds.

The stipends came from the judiciary appropriation bill, following on pay raises in recent years recommended by the special panel created to evaluate these and legislative approval. It had been conditioned upon completion by a district or appellate judge of a workload study, but Republican Gov. Jeff Landry cast a line-item veto on that requirement, stating that the judiciary should evaluate its own members and the study would be completed with over half the fiscal year over.

NO officials enable politicized police missteps

Increasingly it seems necessary for the gutting and reconstitution of the New Orleans Police Department, given the escalating rogue behavior it exhibits throughout itself, but that might require accomplishing the more difficult task of exchanging city political elites.

The ongoing saga involving a member of the department once assigned to Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s security detail on the surface seemed isolated to the officer involved. Both are under federal investigation potentially for defrauding taxpayer resources. That officer was suspended in April and since has filed to retire from the department.

But a twist to the apparently sordid affair, which includes alleged assignations between Cantrell and the officer on the taxpayer dime as she lived unauthorized on city property, a privilege recently revoked by the City Council, Cantrell filed for a protective order against a neighbor at that location supposedly out of pique that the woman had provided video recordings of Cantrell at a public venue that ended up in media reports and possibly as evidence in the looming federal indictments that could involve Cantrell. According to the woman, almost the entire filing was bogus, to which a civil court judge agreed in tossing the entire thing.