Lawmakers must close local govt records loophole

What is characterized as a slip-up at a recent Bossier Parish Police Jury meeting illustrates a yawning gap in Louisiana’s public records laws that the Legislature needs to fix next year.

If you weren’t in the Jury’s chambers of the Bossier Parish courthouse for its meeting this week, you’re out of luck in knowing any details about some vital issues. At it, the fiscal year 2023 budget was dealt with, as well fee changes and restructuring its utility arm the Consolidated Waterworks/Sewerage District No. 1, and also the outcome from the Jury placing a new member on the parish’s Library Board of Control, which over the past couple of years has seen citizen members depopulated in favor of jurors.

Perhaps the most important meeting of the year citizens only can find out about if they wait around about a month to have posted in print and online the official minutes, which contain ordinance texts and vote results, but no real detail about discussions. If they want any details, they will have to resort to copious and burdensome public records requests.

LA might produce another reapportionment case

Possibly, Louisiana could find itself at the forefront of two attempts to redefine electoral reapportionment over the coming year.

This year, the state faced a challenge to its reapportionment of congressional districts. Although the state’s black population comprises nearly a third of the total, the state drew only one of six districts with a black majority. Given the dispersion of black population statewide, trying to carve two majority-minority districts, with extremely slim majorities only possible, would rupture established reapportionment jurisprudence, particularly the ability of a jurisdiction to keep communities of interest together.

Nevertheless, deep-pocketed special interests sued the state, arguing an extremely race-conscious, results-determined view that, contrary to established jurisprudence, race must take precedence over all other traditional criteria or, more specifically, wherever an M/M district could be drawn to ensure the proportion of such districts was close to if not exceeded the racial minority population that a jurisdiction had to do that. A few other such cases in different states also were launched by largely the same special interests.

Bank, don't spend, LA's stagflation largesse

It’s another chance for Louisiana to show some fiscal sanity, an opportunity it often misses and only partially took advantage of last year.

Although the country is wracked by stagflation caused by massive government borrowing and spending by Washington Democrats, state and local governments benefit from direct payments and by pushing larger tax collections off that into their pockets as well. That has added up to a budget surplus for Louisiana for the past fiscal year concluded and promise of surplus for this one, the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference ruled last week. It predicts the final FY 2022 numbers will come in $727 million extra and forecasts an increase of about $900 million over the last estimate for FY 2023.

The former figure is spoken for constitutionally by a half-dozen nonrecurring potential uses, but the latter is wide open for exploitation into making new recurring commitments. Faced with a similar situation last year, lawmakers blew part of it on new but mostly unneeded new commitments such as educator pay raises. That occurred recklessly as the state not only faces some daunting long-term commitments but also a major, if perhaps temporary, revenue reduction starting in 2025 with the temporary 0.45 percent sales tax increase of 2018 rolling off the books that will send lower sales tax collections by an estimated almost $300 million.

Safe seat LA Democrats must go woke or broke

For Louisiana Democrats and safe seat elections, it truly has become go woke or go broke.

Going “woke,” or subscribing to far leftist conspiracy theories that many current government policies propagate systemic racism, oppress the poor, discriminate against people who want to be treated according to a sex identity category that differs from their actual biology, doom the planet to catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, etc. spells electoral disaster statewide and in most district elections. In statewide contests and a large majority of districts, a center-right electorate easily spots and defeats candidates who subscribe to and articulate these fantasies and instead almost always elect Republicans.

That has become increasingly true as state and local elections have become nationalized, a trend strengthened by closer association with party labels to candidate ideology and greater ease in the ability of national political agents to intervene in these contests. But in some districts, mostly majority-black and in all of which Democrats can win, nationalization has spurred on woke candidates.

Few gain, most lose from more BC tennis courts

The reasons why Bossier City wants to bill taxpayers $1.5 million for six tennis courts (plus parking) are Republican City Councilor David Montgomery wants a little more glory, Department of Parks and Recreation Director Clay Bohanan wants a little more control, and Bossier Tennis Center contractor Todd Killen wants a little more money.

This week, the City Council takes up the request, expanding the center by half. The Council conducted a workshop on the matter last week where it heard mostly from proponents from city government and from Killen, who three months ago had his operating contract renewed to the tune of $36,000 annually for three years.

Which, going by the last three years of statements submitted to councilors, doesn’t bring home much for him. Strictly by these numbers, in the 2019-21 period, all he made including the subsidy was $13,184.05 on $528,656.06 in revenues. In fact, he made have lost money over this interval because the 2020 statement uses curious math, registering prior to accounting fees income of just $1,782.84 and then an accounting charge of $17,000 (much higher than the other two years) but which on the statement instead of subtracting as a cost was shown as additional income. Back that out and he lost in reality $20,815.95.

Bossier spending way up; public doesn't know why

Bossier Parish contemplates spending for fiscal year 2023 that will leap by a fifth. If only citizens knew why without going to a lot of inconvenience related to the opaque way the Police Jury does business.

Next week, the Jury will consider final adoption of the budget, going from $103 million in FY 2022 to $128 million this year. Major areas of increased spending include judicial functions, up $2.5 million to $6.2 million; public works, up $12.5 million to nearly $55 million; and culture and recreation, up over $6 million to nearly $17 million. Revenues hardly have kept pace, actually falling over $2 million from last year to almost $91 million. And that’s with state and other funds (from the federal government in special one-time payments such as in the name of the pandemic and Democrat-imposed spending bills) down about that much year-over-year. The parish has to dip into reserves as a result, leaving $61 million left.

This accounting isn’t precise. The Jury posts on its website the budget after its adoption, in broad categories for the general fund and for each special fund. But it doesn’t list figures from the previous year, either budgeted or actually spent. So, the actually spent figures may differ, and substantially, but if you want to know for sure, you’ll either have to trawl through every meeting’s minutes to see if the Jury made adjustments or make a public records request and hope a document with a running tally exists.

North LA racially polarized voting perhaps waning

A couple of interesting theories about the nature of politics emerged from Shreveport’s recently-concluded mayor’s race, especially in context of other north Louisiana major cities. These deserve further scrutiny.

Banging around the rumor mill is that Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver lost, despite his many decades in elected offices and longstanding alliances in a majority-black electorate against white Republican Tom Arceneaux, because he didn’t try hard enough, His real goal, so goes the argument, was to deny Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins reelection, and once he had done so with Perkins failing to make the runoff, he checked out, explaining his lackluster performance.

It's an intuitively simple explanation as to why Arceneaux won in fairly convincing fashion a contest by the numbers he had no business winning. It also has a lot of problems, beginning with Tarver treating the contest from start to finish very seriously.

Edwards one loser after Shreveport elections

Shreveport city elections provided a bumper crop of winners and losers, besides the obvious mayoral victor Republican Tom Arceneaux and other vanquished non-Republicans in the contest, specifically Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver.

WINNER: Local black elected Democrats other than Tarver allies. In politics in Shreveport’s black community, Tarver is the last of the pioneers and over the years increasingly has polarized this arena. While leftist at its foundation and built upon the idea of black empowerment, Tarver has embraced the system rather than trying to reshape it – he’s not woke by any stretch of the imagination – utilizing his power and skills to make gains for the black community as he sees it.

Over time, a majority of black elected city and parish officials in the have swung away from alliances with him, because they take a more militantly ideologically stance and/or because they prefer not to hitch their fortunes to his constellation. A Tarver win would have put them on the outside of city governance with little influence in it, but with his defeat they can cooperate selectively with the Arceneaux administration while shunting Tarver and his allies to the background.

Race less relevant in north LA mayor elections

It began in Monroe in 2020 and by the end of 2022 all four of north Louisiana’s major cities will have white mayors, mostly new and not Democrats among cities mostly with black Democrat-majority electorates, challenging existing notions about what candidates can win where.

This remarkable development north of Interstates 10/12 started with the election of independent Friday Ellis in Monroe, knocking off longtime black incumbent Democrat Mayor Jamie Mayo. Then, Monroe’s electorate contained 63 percent Democrats and 55 percent black Democrats.

In 2021, in Bossier City Republican Tommy Chandler beat GOP Mayor Lo Walker, who had been in office or served as city chief administrative officer for 32 years, Then, the electorate was about 80 percent white and over half Republican.

Arceneaux cracked black solidarity to triumph

In understanding the Shreveport mayor’s election, the 2006 contest wasn’t the proper benchmark to explain Republican Tom Arceneaux’s upset victory over Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver, it was Monroe’s 2020 race, thereby providing a model for potential future GOP wins.

Despite a black majority electorate and a majority of Democrats in it, Arceneaux not only defeated Tarver, he won going away with 56 percent of the vote. It marks the first time since 2006 the city had a white mayor and only its third Republican ever, the first since 1998.

That 2006 election provided a cautionary lesson why this triumph seemed so unlikely. Back then, in the general election Republican Jerry Jones plus two other Republicans gained 45 percent of the vote, leaving black Democrat Cedric Glover at 32 percent, and white Democrat Liz Swaine got 13 percent. That math should have given Jones a close victory in an electorate then barely majority white.