Fuller exit no trouble to Perkins reelection bid

Is it the end, or a new beginning, for the political career of Shreveport Democrat City Councilor LeVette Fuller?

This week, only days prior to qualifying fall elections, Fuller announced she wouldn’t run for reelection in District B. She implied in a radio interview that she experienced some contention with fellow councilors and expressed displeasure at how reapportionment had gone, which seemed to be more of a complaint about drawing the lines in general and not how her own district turned out, although she did criticize moving out the city’s casinos by the Red River.

If so, both irritants harken back to her record since her 2018 election. Although she ran more as a progressive, among Democrats on the Council she more likely than the others of her party backed positions advanced by the Republican minority. Often, these reflected disappointment at the Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins Administration for a number of good government flubs instigated by his policies. This earned her enmity from her partisan colleagues who much more uncritically backed Perkins, as until recently by joining with the other party that faction could act as a majority to stall or defeat Perkins’ preferences.

Recycling follies trigger another Perkins flub

The year-long comedy of errors regarding Shreveport recycling follies just won’t subside, just in time to allow voters to associate the incompetence displayed throughout with Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins as qualifying for fall elections looms a week away.

Just over twelve months ago, the Perkins Administration decided to award its curbside recycling contract to a firm headed by Charlette Edwards. A year earlier, the previous contractor – who had insisted it could make money for all off the enterprise – abandoned the money-losing deal, which forced the city to suspend the program and stop collecting the extra fee funding it for which it hit up households.

Although the program over a decade did little to conserve landfill space or to pump up city coffers but certainly squeezed residents, Perkins was sacred and bound to restart it. But only Edwards’ firm bid on it – and won the $9.5 million award over five years despite having no experience in this area, no equipment, no employees, and saying it would haul everything 75 miles away (the old contractor had a facility at the Port of Caddo-Bossier).

Veto session tally reveals GOP cowards, posers

Over the next several months especially Republicans in the Louisiana Legislature who were derelict in their duty will try to fob off excuses for cancelling the 2022 veto session. None are convincing.

Representatives came through with only six Republicans sending in a ballot to cancel. This left 63, ten more than necessary, to keep on the session. However, the party in the Senate let down the people, with all Democrats joined by 14 – over half – of their GOP counterparts giving their consent to cancel.

The phenomenon particularly applied to those term-limited who, unless they have aspirations for another office, will leave elective politics at the end of next year. All of those who can’t run for the Senate in 2023 and thus don’t have to face voter retribution over this – state Sens. Bret Allain, Fred Mills, Barrow Peacock, Bodi White, and Sen. Pres. Page Cortez – opted to take the easy way out and cancel.

LA poised to become most protective of life

The merchants of death will continue to resist kicking and screaming, but Louisiana is staying on course to complement its reputation as the most pro-life state in the country in becoming the state most protective of life within its borders.

Last week, after abortionists shopped venues to find a rogue judge willing to slap a temporary restraining order onto the state’s laws outlawing abortion except when continuing a pregnancy significantly threatened the life of the mother, including instances where the unborn would not live, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry and others both asked the state Supreme Court to stay that immediately and argued against its extension in Orleans Civil Court just a couple of days later.

Unfortunately, the Court refused to act. A majority called its intervention premature, allegedly not rising to the level of merit necessary to take such a broad action. But, as both Republican Assoc. Justices Jay McCallum and Will Crain noted in dissents, this case did attain that importance, as the plaintiffs’ justification of being unable to continue business didn’t constitute immediate and irreparable harm and especially, as Crain noted, the harm done to the unborn itself was irreparable.

Veto session needed to improve accountability

Due to faulty leadership by Republicans House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Sen. Pres. Page Cortez it now seems unlikely that the Louisiana Legislature will override any vetoes cast by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Still, for accountability’s sake conservative Republican majorities should trigger the session.

Failure by Cortez and Schexnayder to schedule and get passed at least a couple of weeks prior to the regular session’s close a number of bills Edwards ended up vetoing prevented boxing him into a corner where he knew override votes likely could come against any he cast, which likely would have discouraged his from doing that for many in the first place. And even for those he did veto, chances would have been high that overrides of several of these would have succeeded.

Instead, by delaying they put the supermajorities they essentially have for overrides at risk by giving a handful of less reliably conservative Republicans the chance to beg off session attendance, claiming they scheduled other obligations (or in the case of GOP state Sen. Rogers Pope, saying he wouldn’t vote for any overrides despite previously voting for the bills in question) during the veto session period even though they know the calendar puts one there that only may be canceled optionally. It may be that Cortez and Schexnayder allowed show votes on good legislation they knew Edwards likely would strike to let these members to burnish their credentials for next year’s elections by giving them the chance to vote for things they might really oppose, without eventual policy consequences.

Schexnayder, Cortez fail veto leadership tests

If overrides of vetoes cast by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards don’t happen this month, that will indict directly and negatively the leadership abilities, if not their commitment to quality legislation, of Republicans House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and Sen. Pres. Page Cortez.

Earlier this week, Cortez said he thought any veto session would prove futile because, with only 26 GOP senators present and that the bare minimum to make for a supermajority, Republican state Sen. Rogers Pope had communicated to him that he wouldn’t vote for an override of any of the 28 measures (plus budget lines items) Edwards had vetoed – even though Pope voted for all of the most consequential items. It also turns out that Republican state Sen. Bodi White scheduled himself for surgery during the mid-July span.

Perhaps one could see this coming when one of the Senate’s get-along-go-along Republicans Rick Ward, seeing his influence wane as more solidly conservative Republicans increasingly called the legislative tune, announced just before the regular session’s end he would resign with more than a year to go in his final term. This gave the GOP Senate supermajority required to override successfully no margin to spare, echoing last year when Republican former Sen. Ronnie Johns said he wouldn’t and didn’t attend the veto session, then quit right after it to join the Edwards Administration.

LA needs to give CA taste of its own medicine

Two can play that game, and Louisiana should and could if it had a governor worth his salt.

Last week, California essentially slapped a state-paid travel ban on its employees from going to Louisiana and a few other states. New Orleans is a top ten destination for professional meetings and other conventions, many of which involve government employees.

The ostensible reason is from a state law giving its attorney general the power to declare other states’ laws as insufficiently pro-non-heterosexual, in this instance citing Louisiana’s newly minted Act 823 that compels scholastic and collegiate athletic teams to offer equal opportunities to each student to participate in team sporting events on an equal basis. The law asks California agencies to police the matters themselves, so it’s unclear just how porous the dictate might be.

GOP legislators driving leaders to veto session

So, what’s it going to be, veto session or not? What seems more certain is that the Republican leadership in the Louisiana Legislature doesn’t have much control over its members on this issue.

With a final body count of 28 (plus a few line items in the operating budget), Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards cast vetoes under the looming reality that not only a real possibility exists of a veto session springing to life to challenge his hit jobs, but also that one or more overrides may succeed. That the Legislature, with a GOP supermajority in the Senate plus one and only one short of that in the House of Representatives, called such a session last year and another concurrent with the regular session this year that did override a special session veto makes this inescapable.

And, yes, there now are 69 Republicans in the House with the quiet party switch of state Rep. Malinda White – at this time last year a Democrat – from no party. This likely has much more to do with her future political ambitions than any change of heart, but her eagerness ensures she’ll vote to override at least some measures so as to create favorable campaign talking points, and the fact that Democrat state Rep. Francis Thompson these days much more often votes with the GOP than with his fellow Democrats means an effective override majority now also exists in the House.

Independence Day, 2022

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, Jul. 4 being Independence Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

LA needed roads maybe slowed by Biden wokeism

Woke roads may not be coming to Louisiana, but the attitude behind these might slow down progress to complete the state’s portion of Interstate 49 to link with the rest of the country.

The concept of wokeness – that America from its history, culture, society, and economic system is so irredeemably racist that only replacement at the systemic level led by government (which itself needs a makeover for this reason) can cure it – made its practical appearance in transportation policy when the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration announced over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund pilot projects that remove allegedly oppressive after-effects of highways going through area with majority-minority populations. This could include more portals and connecting access across areas where highways run, beautification, and repurposing of rail lines.

But most controversially, removal of those highways qualifies for the pot. That has been the goal in some urban areas, including New Orleans where Interstate 10 swoops south to skirt the north edge of the Vieux Carré before curving back to meet the straight-shot I-610, in the process following a stretch of Claiborne Avenue that seven decades ago was much more vibrant and a mecca for commerce in the city’s black community. Activists have argued for destruction of the elevated roadway and restoration of Claiborne.