Bossier Parish Jury: black hole of transparency

Like a successful burglar in the night, the Bossier Parish Police Jury passed a budget that nobody can decipher outside of the courthouse much less knew about, perhaps because nobody outside of parish government really could tell what was in it.

This should come as no surprise, as the Jury has a history as the most opaque of major northwest Louisiana governments, if not of any nine-figure local government in the state. Unlike other are larger local governments, in its agendas, other than some maps to go along with zoning decisions (which is the bulk of its decision-making), its various ordinances and resolutions contain no documentation or attachments, just their titles and extremely brief descriptions. Compelled by state law to transmit its meetings and those of its committees, for the former it chooses a low-quality Facebook Live format which at least creates an archival copy, as for the latter it uses Zoom that keeps no copy for future viewing.

Its staff can’t even get right the new state law that compels such governments to send out agendas to its meetings and any of its committee meetings to any requestor. I made such a request originally to the parish’s public information officer Rod White, which got shuttled to the assistant parish secretary Ashley Ezell who then wrote after the Nov. 20 meeting saying the agenda bounced to the e-mail address to which she had sent that note (no mention about the committees). It baffles me why it would bounce when she subsequently sent successfully a message to that account, but I wrote her back saying the address was good, for obvious reasons.

Caddo must reject budget-busting wage hike

Recently headed in the right direction, the Caddo Parish Commission can’t veer back into stupidity, as it threatens to do by compounding a mistake it has made previously.

This week, the Commission will decide whether to extend a $15 an hour minimum wage policy to significant contracts and contractors. Earlier this year it committed the folly of doing that to its employees. The silly argument made at the time for that was it made for a “living” wage that would diminish poverty and therefore crime.

Of course, research demonstrates that setting artificial wage floors that overpay for the contribution a particular activity makes for society ends up to the detriment of society. Visibly, it eliminates jobs either by having to spread out more work to fewer people in order to make it economically viable and has a similar ripple effect upwards in pay grades, and/or in background this increases automation as that becomes relatively cheaper eventually to the point of the most cost effective strategy.

GOP has real shot at winning EBR mayor-president

If early voting is any indication, the GOP has a real shot at grabbing the chief executive’s job in the parish with the state’s most voters

East Baton Rouge Parish is where most of the runoff election action is for Louisiana thus fall. It’s got a slate of city-parish elections (now whittled to a couple of Metropolitan Council spots) topped by the mayor-president’s showdown between Democrat incumbent Sharon Weston Broome and challenger Republican high school football coach and administrator Sid Edwards.

It’s a pairing that surprised a number of media analysts that should not have, given that about a third of parish voters are Republicans and Broome had to split Democrats with eventual third-place finisher former state Rep. Ted James, as well as Broome’s unimpressive tenure heading the city that ranks low in quality of life and stagnant from 2010 to 2020 in population and estimated to lose numbers since. More recently, Broome fought then botched the transition of parish unincorporated areas into St. George that could cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars.

LA must do more to ban DEI, promote civics

It’s time for Louisiana not only to ban legally race-conscious practices in programming and personnel actions in the state’s higher education institutions, but to go beyond that to aid in understanding why.

Recently, the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors voted to end practices such as requiring diversity statements for hiring and review programs for whether these privilege race-conscious activities and to institute a policy of neutrality in institutional communications on issues of the day. Some, like LSU’s Baton Rouge campus, have taken this a step further voluntarily by at least renaming, and presumably repurposing, academic offices and positions fundamentally tied to the diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts.

But it’s not enough. The three other systems since then have not done the same. Two will have their supervisors meet int December and the Southern University System’s supervisors met this past weekend; it didn’t address the topic and the other two don’t indicate that they will.