Ad shows Landry opponents have nothing left

If this is the best the GOP opponents of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry can do to try to derail his gubernatorial train, they might as well quit the race now and save taxpayers the expense of a general election runoff in two months.

In advance of a televised debate that Landry won’t attend because one of the hosts is a nonpartisan but clearly leftist advocacy group, Republican Treas. John Schroder released an attack advertisement that may get some air time at least in parts of the state. The ad points out that Texas lawyer Zach Moseley, as part of the firm in which he is a principal, is alleged to have engaged in a variety of shady practices over a blizzard of suits against insurers regarding recent hurricane disasters that have struck Louisiana.

Already the Western District of Louisiana federal judiciary has hauled him and others of this firm in front of it to explain themselves, as well as mete out fines, over actions such as withholding settlement monies that netted them suspensions, and frowned upon the firm’s aggressive collecting of clients, opaqueness in informing clients of their rights if not outright misrepresentation (taking advantage of a loophole in state law now closed as a result of the negative publicity), and potentially even breaking the law with such actions as forgeries. The state’s Insurance Department already has fined the firm, Moseley, and two others a maximum $2 million besides halting their ability to do business in the state for a time which the court continued.

Landry forum pass rational, aids his campaign

Tomorrow brings the first significant televised debate among 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial candidates, yet the most significant candidate by the polls won’t be there. That reflects an escalating trend towards ushering this kind of campaign event into irrelevancy, because candidates increasingly control the presentation of campaign information.

Front runner Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry won’t attend this put on by a consortium of television stations, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Urban League. He said he would take a pass because of the Urban League’s presence, which holds itself out as nonpartisan but has a history of fronting left-wing causes. For example, Landry has been critical of overbroad assertions of affirmative action, most recently filing suit to prevent the federal government from applying outcome-oriented usage of it for environmental regulation without regard for intent, while the Urban League has given full-throated support of expansive use of the concept.

Landry also may have had queasiness about the Advocate, which has a thinly-disguised antipathy towards him that shapes its coverage of the campaign. When it’s not publicizing molehills in an attempt to make mountains out of Landry oversights, it reprints pieces from the far-left Louisiana Illuminator website that makes no bones about its disdain for Landry, and its subsidiary shopper Gambit’s leftist editor unleashes editorial broadsides against him.

Declining LA fiscal health to hit disabled worst

Scratch the fantasy that Louisiana big government advocates had that recent new spending commitments wouldn’t put the state into future fiscal distress, exacerbated by wasteful Medicaid policy decisions designed more to expand the number of people on this dole rather than to help the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Last month, the Division of Administration presented updated financial numbers reflecting trends in revenue collection and spending since the Revenue Estimating Conference last set such numbers in stone in May. These will go into one of the two recommendations for revenues and expenses certified by the REC close to year’s end.

While this report predicted a surplus of nearly $150 million for the next fiscal year of 2024-25, the bottom drops out in the next two, where both FY 2026 and FY 2027 are forecast to produce each nearly a half a billion dollar deficits. The end of the 2016 and 2018 sales tax increase of 0.45 percent mainly drives the new gap. Worse, tax changes from the 2023 legislative session have yet to be factored in, which could have a further negative impact.

LA Freedom Caucus can change policy trajectory

It’s a bold bid, but one if even moderately successful could drag Louisiana governance (probably kicking and screaming) into the 21^st century.

The Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC, the campaign arm of a collection of Republican House of Representatives members plus supporters, last week released a list of endorsees for upcoming legislative elections. This entitles them to campaign assistance.

Endorsees are judged to adhere to conservative principles and include both current legislators and hopefuls in joining them. Regarding this decision for existing legislators, one criterion stood out: only the 19 representatives who voted against breaking the constitutional spending caps in this past regular legislative session were eligible for endorsement. No senators did.

BC graybeards drop fig leaves at Chandler pressure

As the fig leaves fall away and the threats escalate, the battle about term limits on Bossier City elected officials has mutated from a veneer of concern over legal obligations to a process driven by reelection concerns on both sides, although opponents have captured a monopoly on hypocritical self-interest that continues to erode their political fortunes while giving Mayor Tommy Chandler a tremendous opportunity to boost his own.

This week a Council majority of graybeards – councilors Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby who all will have served at least 12 years by 2025 – plus their pet rookie Republican Vince Maggio, in concert with their consigliere City Attorney Charles Jacobs hope to go all Cosa Nostra in their endeavor to defeat the effort to give voters a say on a three-term lifetime and retroactive limit in office. They combat a petition certified by Bossier Parish Registrar of Voters Stephanie Agee that the city charter forces the Council to approve placing such an item on the ballot by Nov. 7.

But this majority bloc resists, because such a vote of taken within the next 14 months almost certainly will pass the measure and end the political careers of the graybeards. And the excuse they try to use is the petition didn’t directly have the birth years of signers listed as stated specifically in the relevant state statute, although it did list the voter identification numbers unique to signing individuals that includes the birth year of them, providing an indirect listing that complies with the spirit of the law if not its exact wording.

BC Council invites trouble with expression rule

As if Bossier City hasn’t invited enough legal repercussions by its continuing refusal to follow its charter concerning a petition to vote to amend this basic law, its long-standing regulations on public discourse at City Council meetings threatens even more of these.

Required by law, the Council must allow adequate citizen input in discussion of its actions during a meeting. It began the practice of informing the public of its rights at its Aug, 18, 2020 meeting as a result of acts passed that year by the Louisiana Legislature. Previous statute noted that a “governing body may adopt reasonable rules and restrictions regarding such comment period.” This had been accomplished lastly at the Jan. 21, 2020 meeting.

However, through the Aug. 1, 2023 meeting, the announcing that had commenced nearly three years earlier included only part of that Resolution #5 of 2020, under the “Decorum” section, part of the subsection “Members of the Public Addressing the Council,” which reads:

Rebuffed threat may shuffle Shreveport politics

A clumsy maneuver by a veteran member of the Shreveport City Council with the support of two others may have altered the dynamics of city politics, in favor of Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux.

In his first two-thirds of a year on the job, Arceneaux hasn’t been very visible. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, as previous Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins put himself much more in the public eye on a routine basis, but for the wrong reasons: either in floating dreamy, unrealistic, if not irrelevant, policies and priorities, or by committing some political, if not legal, folly.

Drummed out of office for those tendencies, nevertheless Perkins council supporters Democrats James Green, Tabatha Taylor, and Alan Jackson returned to office. They hoped to form a working majority including the two other Democrats elected, Ursula Bowman who succeeded her husband Jerry, and newcomer Gary Brooks, to continue an agenda that didn’t focus on spending reductions in the light of public safety shortages contributing to dismal crime numbers and looming huge capital expenditures on water and sewerage, if not unwise new commitments such as across-the-board salary increase for city employees.

BC deserves better than out-of-control Jacobs

It’s not Bossier City Attorney Charles Jacobs’ world, and Bossier Citians shouldn’t have to live in it any longer.

But Jacobs seems to think it is, from his actions and information revealed at the Aug. 29 meeting of the City Council. Discussion of a certified petition that under the city charter mandates that the City Council put its contents on the ballot, as it did not pass this into an ordinance that amends the charter within 30 days of certification on Jul. 10, within 120 days of receipt or Nov. 7, precipitated these revelations.

The existence of that petition spawned an attempt by the set of councilors who during the 30-day window opposed bringing its contents into the charter by a Council vote – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and no party Jeff Darby – to support a charter review commission that could address term limits. The petition calls for a lifetime three-term limit for city elected officials, retroactively. A commission could ask voters to approve the same, but much more likely any term limits proposal from it would grandfather in existing councilors, as the petition language would disallow all but Maggio from running for reelection.

Lundy rises in poll, but no chance to win

Three words answer the question as to whether independent Hunter Lundy has a chance to win the Louisiana governor’s race: no, no, and no.

Lundy’s name showed up in third place with 7 percent among the contenders in the latest independent poll released by a set of media outlets, although in one completed days before that for another set of outlets he came in sixth at 3 percent. In both instances, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry led the way with over 35 percent while Democrat former cabinet member Shawn Wilson took home about a quarter of the vote intention.

Speculation has swirled whether one of four other quality Republicans could begin to consolidate undecided votes, if not pick off voters from other candidates, to challenge for a runoff spot. The thinking was, even as the GOP candidates other than Landry differed from him much more in style than in issue preferences, that voters not on the left of the ideological spectrum who weren’t fans of Landry could find a home with another Republican.

BC reformers shouldn't throw away winning hand

The next moves have been played in the Bossier City term limits drama, but don’t change the dynamics that put reformers in the driver’s seat.

Last week, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s office replied to a City Council resolution of Aug. 15 seeking a legal opinion of the status of a petition certified Jul. 10 by the parish registrar of voters. The city, relying both on its city attorney Charles Jacobs and an outside opinion written by a lawyer who had worked with the city previously but who has no particular expertise in this area of law, questioned whether the petition followed state law and the charter.

The AG’s office declined to assess that, stating that it represents registrars of voters and therefore could not involve itself. Whereupon GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler placed back on the Council’s Aug. 29 agenda an item passed over two weeks earlier: calling an election to have the electorate consider the petition’s lifetime three-term limit, past and future, on elected officials.