NW LA voters may deliver sound fiscal policy messages

Money matters in upcoming Bossier and Shreveport elections this Saturday, even where it’s not a tax issue that’s being considered. As it turns out, it gives the citizenry in both the parish and the city to send messages to elected officials and wannabes, some with tin ears.

The largest dollar amounts go to the three propositions floated by Shreveport for waters and sewerage infrastructure, streets and drainage infrastructure, and changes made to public buildings, their resources, and parks. Totaling $175 million, the city argues that unless it makes now some improvements for legal reasons dealing with environmental and accessibility concerns, the federal government may force these things on it without warning, as well as tackling deferred maintenance.

These measures have generated some controversy because to some observers they don’t seem quite essential, asserting that no legal action presently exists against the city for the presumed shortcomings to be addressed by the spending and these measures were put together hastily, but perhaps more because of the city’s claim that taxes won’t rise as a result of these new issues.

Spendthrift ways hard to purge from NW LA govts

It seems that Bossier City, of all places, has caught an extremely mild dose of fiscal restraint. Although exportation of its internal disease of big spending probably is not what municipal taxpayers have in mind.

Drawing simultaneously public amusement and outrage, as the nation’s overall economy has stagnated in the past three years local governments have found themselves under pressure to cut back on expenditures that seem to have little justification. The practice of local governments sending phalanxes of officials to hang around the annual Carnival celebrations in Washington, put on by the state’s Congressional delegation, have drawn particular scrutiny.

The lengths to which some of the local officials involved go to try to present these affairs, where these government racks up hotel charges in the thousands of dollars, live high off the hog in dining, and shell out hundreds or many times more of taxpayer dollars to be at or to host parties, can present high comedy.

GOP Senate oddly passes on redistricting grand slam

So we assume that the Louisiana Republican Party’s state elected officials want to use their legislative and gubernatorial majorities to ensure redistricting favorable to their future electoral chances? Then why, after yesterday’s activities revealed, did they stop short of this?

To maximize, its legislators had to draw boundaries that did not help the fortunes of other parties’ candidates, specifically Democrats, for the state House, Senate, and Congress. For Congress, they succeeded: the plan that emerged from the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, creating two north-south districts, made for districts that had fewer black residents, who are very reliable Democrat voters, than did the Democrats’ plan of northern- and central-banded districts in the same area. The net effect is zero – as many seats remain favorable to Republicans and black Democrats as before.

For the House, also mission accomplished.

Elections matter: GOP redistricting grand slam in offing?

The hammer is coming down. Who operates it and how it will strike remains uncertain, but soon Louisiana redistricting of its Congressional seats and legislature will reveal these power players, and they will work to the advantage of Republicans.

Last week, a balance of interests began ordering in the special session called mainly for this purpose. Republicans seemed willing to go even up in throwing House incumbents together, two pairs for each party, while letting a chance to add an extra electorally favorable Senate seat along with an extra black majority/minority seat go by the wayside, in exchange for creating two north-south Congressional spots rather than northern and central banded districts, where the latter advantaged Democrat contenders.

Then it seemed to fall apart yesterday as enough House members, where the GOP holds a narrow advantage, amended the House plan to force three sets of Republican incumbents together and just one pair of Democrats.

Bossier City needs review of marshal's office activities

The tragic accidental death of Bossier City Marshal Johnny Wyatt created a net loss for the community, yet brings an opportunity for an efficient reconfiguration of the office’s functions and greater accountability to the citizenry -- especially trenchant for the upcoming special election to fulfill Wyatt's term.

One of the enemies of good governance and the ability of the governed to understand the uses to which government puts their resources and the powers government can exercise over them is lack of clarity in who is responsible for what. Unless citizens easily can identify where their money goes, how it then is used, and who makes the decisions on how it is used, they risk having lack of input into prioritization and implementation of spending decisions. Obscured accountability also can create inefficiency, threatening to waste the public’s dollars through duplication or even by agencies working at cross-purposes.

Touted concerning Wyatt’s tenure in office was the many functions his office performed, most extensively in protecting children against predators via the Internet. But if we review what Louisiana law outlines as the function of the marshal’s office, in fact it is a much smaller portfolio.

Confidence loss from Knight's actions merit his exit

Long suffering citizens of Bossier City might have been excused if last year they thought the one new face of their elected officials wasn’t, like the reelected bunch, an idiot and/or con man.

 

But charging City Councilman James “Chubby” Knight with running a check-cashing scam, it was alleged that he went one-up on the incompetents with which he serves. At least their needlessly spending over $100 million on low priority items over the past decade that with other spending left a mountain of debt whose summit has yet to be reached, which prevented them from using the investment proceeds thereof to mitigate or solve last year’s budget crisis, seem to have done all of their blundering legally.

Knight, the one non-incumbent to gain election, stood accused of knowingly shopping around forged checks for cashing.

Improper analysis, interpretation complicate LA redistricting

Today we’ll get a better idea whether the retreat forced upon Republican interests in the Louisiana House – apparently inspired by some misleading analysis and misinformation – turns out tactical or permanent, when the House and Governmental Affairs Committee reconvenes to consider the body’s redistricting of itself.

Yesterday, the panel narrowly voted, with the help of Republican state Reps. Brett Geymann and Greg Cromer, to have an additional minority/majority district established in Caddo Parish, bringing the total number of these under the current configuration of HB 1 that accomplishes redistricting to 30, up from 27 currently. This idea was rejected originally by its author Speaker Jim Tucker because he thought it would create M/M districts that may not elect minority members.

Testimony revealed one opinion that said this was not the case, given his best guesses about voting turnout in the 2008 presidential and 2010 Shreveport mayor’s contests. The fear was, because M/M districts of blacks typically have lower turnout and lower voting age populations as a greater proportion of the population than elsewhere is younger than 18, the voting eligible population only questionably might elect black representatives in all black M/M districts drawn in Caddo if four rather than three were present.

However, this analysis doesn’t exactly make for a valid comparison.

Misleading rhetoric stems from power loss frustration

Ever notice how among elected state Democrats whenever policy goes their way, we hear nothing about “partisanship,” but when it doesn’t, suddenly the worst of “partisanship” has descended upon the pristine Legislature? If the redistricting debate launched in the House is any indicator, expect to hear a lot of the latter rhetoric in the future.

Yesterday, House Democrats complained about Republican Speaker Jim Tucker’s redistricting plan for the body, which would increase the number of black majority districts from 27 to 29 – tantamount to guaranteeing Democrats seats given the propensity of black voters overwhelmingly to vote Democrat. But that’s not enough for the opposition, who thinks a 30^th such seat can be squeezed out no matter how oddly districts end up getting shaped and how few communities of interest come together in a rational manner.

Democrat complainers also fault the special session’s HB 1 for creating two instances outside of New Orleans and a few around it where Democrat incumbents look to be forced to run together. Together, in the words of House Democrat Caucus Chairman John Bel Edwards, “It’s more partisan because everything the speaker wants to do creates an advantage for Republicans.”

Perhaps Edwards has trouble with reading comprehension, or maybe he just hasn’t read the bill,

New black Democrat majority to affect LA redistricting

It appears that contention over redistricting plans serves as the inaugural flexing of political muscle among Louisiana’s black elected Democrats, promoted as they are now from the back of the party’s bus to claiming the driver’s seat.

Lost in the numbers bandied about in redistricting plans and in the latest two Democrat-to-Republican switches in the state Senate is that black political interests now firmly control the legislative Democrats. As of now, even though in both chambers some white Democrats (and one white recent Republican convert) represent majority black districts, the fact is a majority of districts held by Democrats in both have black majorities, while 44 percent of Democrat representatives and 50 percent of Democrat senators are black.

This power arrangement profoundly will affect Democrats’ positioning on redistricting issues.

LA remap plans should clear unless politics interfere

As Louisiana embarks on redistricting, the lack of familiarity with the decennial process and the law involved can create much confusion. Hence, some words of clarity can help to explain the likelihood the chambers’ current plans coming to fruition.

First, unlike with the strict requirement of population equality for Congressional districts, that they have equiproportional populations “as nearly as is practicable” (stemming from Wesberry v. Sanders), making the courts very leery of any deviation in district populations, the standard for state and local districts has been of substantial equality, where there is “substantially equal state legislative representation” (from Reynolds v. Sims). In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a series of cases since 1964, never has set down a hard-and-fast rule on acceptable population deviation but has created a locus of around 10 percent, with extenuating circumstances allowing for even greater deviations to be upheld and lesser ones overturned.

Louisiana lawmakers set an internal target of five percent. However, legally it could go as high as 10 percent,