BC must reject graybeard legacy of higher taxes

Just like herpes, the mismanagement of Bossier City by several former city councilors and mayors over the past three decades flares yet again to inflict pain on its citizenry, this time with the specter of higher property taxes.

In last year’s budget workshop, Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham noted that the city had to make two major revenue upcharges to keep the budget balanced. The first shoe to fall was fee hikes on sanitation and related activities that started early this year, but which also included excising a break multiple occupancy owners were getting by not charging them by the occupied residence (typically, apartment complexes have just one or a handful of meters where renters pay a fixed water rate in their rent and the complex does its own sanitation) the public works fee that covered roads upkeep and pest/animal control on public thoroughfares.

That controversy flared up earlier this summer when many of the few apartment complex owners, apparently inattentive to their own businesses, found their bills skyrocketing and complained to the city. After some negotiation, this week the Council  adjusted the enabling ordinance by charging for 80 percent of residences (assuming a fifth at any given time were unoccupied) and suspending its implementation until next year in order to give owners a chance to adjust rental contracts and rates.

Best constitutional outcome delays new LA map

It’s best that Louisiana hold off on a congressional reapportionment special session, even with a powerful argument to proceed with one posthaste.

As signals mount from the U.S. Supreme Court that it plans to decouple race from partisanship in deciding the role race plays as a factor in reapportionment except in instances where a jurisdiction deliberately intends to discriminate against a community defined by a form of racial solidarity, calls have come from the White House on down that Republican-led states should proactively begin the reapportionment process, years ahead of the next census results that would necessitate this. Driving this desire is an expected close House of Representative election next year that could go either way. In fact, the coming election has threatened to trigger a line-drawing arms race where several states controlled by one of the major parties have vowed, or even started to, redraw their maps in the hopes of seizing partisan advantage without race playing such a prominent role as the judiciary has assigned it since the operative Alabama cases opened the door to having states draw boundaries in rough proportion their racial compositions.

Which the Voting Rights Act specifically denies without a showing of deliberate discrimination intent and is why the Court seems on the verge of saying any rationale for giving race such prominence needs review in the light of changing times, deemphasizing that outcome necessarily must mirror intent. Section 2 by word prohibits specific mirroring of the proportion of district majorities to population proportions but by judicial interpretation has erred on the sides of results bearing a large role in determining intent. That seems set to change with a Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais to be decided next year that likely will redefine case law addressing Section 2 away from this thinking or excising it completely on the basis that societal conditions have made the results-equal-intent view timebound and no longer applicable.

Elected police chiefs increase corruption chances

As noted yesterday, one good reason not to have elected police chiefs in Louisiana is increased chances of reduced administrative competence complemented by greater confusion when parceling out public safety from other executive functions. But there’s a far more insidious and damaging reason for rejection of that selection method: reduced oversight that makes the office more prone to corruption.

There’s nothing new here; scandals among elected Louisiana police chiefs have occurred all too frequently, unfortunately. Yet recently an alleged wide-ranging scheme only emphasizes the point.

Earlier this month, acting Western Louisiana District Attorney Alexander Van Hook along with other federal criminal investigators announced grand jury indictments against three present and past police chiefs and one marshal (an office itself prone to corruption) and a businessman for a criminal enterprise involving fake crime incident reports over a decade that claimed nonexistent crimes committed against noncitizens as a method to illegally grant these noncitizens legal status in the country. The businessman would solicit money from the aliens to pose as crime victims or witnesses to qualify for the visas designed to aid authorities in criminal investigations.

Elected police chiefs stoke governing confusion

There are two good reasons to get rid of elected police chiefs in Louisiana, one of these being just the confusion in city administration that occurs which can allow interpersonal conflicts to flourish that, in at least once instance, prompted the law to be disregarded in multiple ways.

The drama unfolding in Minden stands as prime example. Through a quirk in statute that allows a marshal to serve as a municipality’s police chief and be elected, it’s one of the largest cities in the state with an elected police chief, a selection method which separates from an otherwise unified administrative structure perhaps the most important function of a city. Likely that’s why the interrelations between no party Police Chief Jared McIver, two officers, no party Mayor Nick Cox, and the City Council produced a bizarre sequence of events that still are far from resolved.

Early this year, veteran Minden Police Department officer Chris Hammontree made an arrest connected to what is described as a “well-known” Minden resident. In February, he also made a stop of a couple passing through town that eventually involved his opening a stuffed animal that carried a container which he opened, holding the ashes of the woman’s child. A dispute has arisen as to whether he had sufficient probable cause to do so.

LPSC must follow through on good data center deal

Louisianans racked up a big win as parameters of the impending Meta, Inc. data center in Richland Parish put the effort on course for delivering maximal economic benefits with minimal consumer costs.

A number of special interests tried to prevent that. Some were anti-fossil fuel/pro-catastrophic anthropogenic global warming believers who primarily oppose the effort because it would encourage significantly more natural gas use and secondarily as they desire guaranteed greater use of more expensive/less reliable renewable sources of energy for the project. Others are aggrieved large-scale consumers who want to create alternative paths for energy acquisition without having to go through Entergy Louisiana, the supplier for the project.

Over the past few months, activity has involved attempts by opponents to delay the expedited approval process, but an administrative law judge sidetracked multiple efforts to do so. This led to a two-day hearing earlier this month that will lead to a recommendation by the judge about the parameters for approval by the Louisiana Public Service Commission, but public aspects of that already have been worked out in a settlement agreement among all parties. The LPSC must give eventual approval because Entergy wants to build and operate three natural gas plants as the bulk of power for Meta’s operations.