LA may need to counter further progressive DAs

Louisiana state senators performed a valuable service by public vetting of a rogue prosecutor’s action where he substituted his own agenda in place of the state’s Constitution and criminal code.

This week, the Senate Judiciary C Committee held a hearing concerning post-conviction relief. This is a legal procedure where a convict can have a sentence reduced or even a conviction overturned by a claim of factual innocence combined with corroborating evidence, or by verification of some kind of legal impairment in the case. Time constraints apply except under circumstances such as new or review of old evidence or DNA testing results and the like.

The issue didn’t raise much attention until three years ago. Until then, such cases occasionally cropped up, but then two things happened. First, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional non-unanimous jury results and ordered the two states allowing these, one being Louisiana, to set up a review process for all people convicted this way which created 1,500 or so potential reviews. The state did so and set a one-year time limit on petitioning.

Reject excessive Bossier JP, constable request

This month’s first meeting of the Bossier Parish Police Jury featured a remarkable role reversal concerning the issue of justice of the peace and constable pay, with a longtime advocate of smaller government arguing for the opposite and a more recent advocate of expansive government hinting at a tapping of the brakes on that – and rightly so.

The Jury allows for general comments from the public on any subject prior to tackling its business, and availing himself of that was Republican Justice of the Peace Bill Shelton, who serves District 1 (there are five districts total, 1 and 3-6 where two serve 3 and 6 to make for seven officials; 2 is Bossier City with its own city court and marshal). He said he spoke on behalf of all seven JPs and constables (each JP, which is elective, also has a constable elected who carries out the JPs orders), who collectively wanted a pay raise. Shelton observed that the parish paid out $300 a month to each, implying a total taxpayer expense of $50,400 annually, and said these officers had to pay for office, patrol, and enforcement expenses and didn’t want to “go broke” over performing their duties.

Thus, he argued (there was some confusion over the exact amount) for salaries to double, pointing to other jurisdictions that paid much higher and noting that this amount hadn’t increased in at least two decades. This he mentioned in the context of upcoming budgetary discussions by the Jury.

Policy changes enough to forestall LDH cuts

A recent meeting of a legislative panel to review potential belt-tightening in state government, focusing on health care spending, skimmed the surface of how spending priorities need to change to reduce an area that spends nearly after of the state’s budget.

The House Appropriations Committee heard from the Department of Health on its progress identifying areas of reductions. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry asked state agencies to develop plans for an anticipated budget cut from this fiscal year to next, spurred by the expiration of two temporary taxes, by November.

The figure LDH came up with at the state level was $105 million, which, given the menu of choices for cuts, involved $332 million of federal dollars. Much Medicaid spending is compulsory, so only $821 million of state spending can be considered. Of that, around $400 million is for Medicaid expansion.

LA child welfare recovery can't replicate MN

After years of neglect by Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards, Louisiana is picking up the pieces of its child welfare system, but can’t make the mistake of Edwards’ Minnesota doppelganger.

In budgeting, Edwards pursued a strategy of growing government as much as possible and then baking it in by directing the increased spending towards wealth redistribution that targeted leftist priorities and presumed constituencies. Perhaps the foremost example of this was Medicaid expansion, now costing the state $400 million annually with much of that gong to individuals previously insured or who had the resources to do it themselves, while health indicators in the state are no better. Worse, people with disabilities suffered as even a fraction of those dollars could have ameliorated a growing abuse problem in congregate settings and another relatively small portion could have staved off a growing crisis in inability to provide home- and community-based services because of low reimbursement rates and reactive rather than proactive oversight.

But these clients don’t provide much in the way of votes for Democrats or gain plaudits from leftist interest groups and media, unlike with expansion, explaining Edwards’ priorities. But even he took a hit from the left when the Department of Children and Family Services continued to have failure after failure in preventing child abuse that came down to insufficient attention to and funds for child welfare – shortcomings well known to the Edwards Administration over the years but allowed to linger as dollars went to more politicized priorities rather than protecting children from abuse, who of course can’t vote.

Ouachita govts plan on taking more from citizens

Governments across Ouachita Parish seem eager to take more of what their citizens earn, without having made compelling cases to do so.

On the way is a sales tax hike imposed upon several businesses along the West Monroe waterfront – which of course, they must pass on to their patrons that largely comprise city but particularly parish residents. But all West Monrovians will suffer a sewerage rate increase as well starting this week, as a precondition to nabbing a state loan to address long-needed upgrades.

That may be necessary for future maintenance as the city historically had relatively low rates for both water and sewerage. But that led to chronic deficits in running this enterprise that taxpayers had to subsidize within the last few years which to ameliorate turned into rate hikes, as well prompting last year’s  creation of an escalator clause that started this year designed annually to increase rates further by price inflation. And the latest jump that started Sep. 1 will repeat over the next two years. It’s a problem that should have been addressed long ago.

LA should ban controversial custody practice

Louisiana should join several other states in a growing movement to curtail what is known as court-ordered family reunification therapy.

The controversial practice began about a dozen or so years ago applied to extremely contentious child custody cases. Its premise rests upon the belief that one parent who has near-exclusivity in custody of minor children uses that monopolistic arrangement to denigrate the other parent to the point that the other parent considers that misleading and unfair to his (almost always a male) ability to have a relationship with the children, in essence poisoning their relationship to him that reduces if not eliminates that aspect of his life. Its point is to place forcibly the children in the presence of the shunned parent, even if they don’t wish that (under the assumption the custodial parent has “brainwashed” the children against him), and without the custodial parent involved, for her part having to undergo a kind of reeducation to change her ways that allegedly have turned the children against the non-custodial parent.

In its most extreme form, a court orders – at exorbitant expense to the non-custodial parent paid to a third party that claims special expertise in these matters – the children transported to a site where they are encouraged to interact with him, regardless of their or the custodial parent’s wishes. Controversy has risen over these tactics, with verifiable claims from some children involved that these involuntary confining and behavioral devices that have included restraints and food and drink restrictions constitute child abuse, while custodial parents complain that, unless they admit to denigrating falsely the other parent to their children to fulfill selfish desires, they aren’t allowed to regain custody or even have contact – even in instances where the non-custodial parent in the past engaged in abusive behavior towards the children. This has led to some children being separated for years from the parent they do wish to live with and did live with and having to live with the parent they don’t wish to live with and continue not to wish that, despite heartfelt and consistent pleas to be returned to the other parent who has an excellent custody record.

Landry orders advance key preferences -- slightly

Overplay of two stories that otherwise should barely register reflected some panic in Louisiana’s leftist media this week, both a consequence of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry executive orders.

JML 24-136 found headlines first. It requires all state government agencies that provide voter registration forms to include a written disclaimer that noncitizens are prohibited from registering to vote or voting. While helpful, particularly as a reminder for illegal aliens whose grasp of English in other forums may not allowed the point to be made as clearly, state agencies already have orders to crosscheck information and send that to the Secretary of State for voter roll scrubbing. The only thing it really added otherwise is reinforcement that the Office of Motor Vehicles should send noncitizen license or identification holder information to State.

This tiny advancement was too much for some leftists, who fulminated that voting by noncitizens wasn’t an appreciable problem. Of course, this deflects from the two central points confirming why extreme vigilance is necessary to prevent noncitizens registration and voting. First, verified fraud from this source likely is just the tip of the iceberg but is difficult to ascertain precisely because successful operations successfully hide the extent of their fraud. Secondly, voting integrity is so fundamental to American democracy and its ability to create superior public policy that even one illegal vote soils its operation and must be prevented even at great cost.

Weaponized BC panel to attempt insurance

The Bossier City political establishment put Plan C into action to limit challenges to its power, first by resurrecting the moribund Charter Review Commission, then by violating the Charter potentially to make a newly-weaponized Commission relevant to its purposes.

The challenge, of course, is strict term limits, in the form of a lifetime limit of three terms retroactively for city councilors first applied to 2025 elections. Plan A was to keep the matter from consideration by the City Council. The establishment failed, but not because its Council majority of Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and no party Jeff Darby allowed any Council action to amend that into the Charter. That failed because engaged citizens successfully used the Charter’s petitioning process not only to force the matter onto their agenda but also followed the Charter’s stipulation that the Council mandatorily had to approve of the matter going onto the ballot.

This led to Plan B, which was to violate deliberately the Charter by refusing to follow that dictate, a disregarding of their oaths of office which all of Montgomery, Free, Maggio, Williams, and Darby performed not once, but twice. That will fail as well, because a citizen sued to force the Council majority to follow the Charter, and inevitably not only will the judiciary make it do so, but it also will do so on a timeline that permits the electorate to vote on the matter – where, barring something incredibly against the run of play, it will succeed – prior to 2025 city election qualification.

Green scams do little, cost taxpayers much

Climate alarmists in Louisiana received a double dose of bad news recently: the producer of a renewable energy source about which they have qualms disclosed to the state that last year it violated pollution regulations. Meanwhile, taxpayers are ponying up for this despite that this activity makes little difference in the needless scrubbing of carbon from the atmosphere.

Drax Global, whose North American operations are based in Monroe, earlier this year informed state regulators that it had exceeded considerably prohibited emissions limits in 2023, after already confessing and paying a fine for a similar violation in 2022 and also in Mississippi in 2020, where it also registered a violation in 2023 with the penalty as yet undetermined. In the latest incident, its Morehouse BioEnergy LLC and LaSalle BioEnergy LLC emitted high rates of probable carcinogens acetaldehyde and formaldehyde with a total of more than 38 tons per year of toxic or hazardous air pollutants emitted from each site.

Whether these will cause health problems for nearby residents, a claim made in the Mississippi cases but as yet unverified, is unknown. For its part, Drax proactively reported the violations and in other ways tries to benefit nearby communities besides job provision often in areas with higher unemployment and poverty, as well as practicing corporate philanthropy in Monroe and other areas and allying with Louisiana State University to support sustainable forestry.

New LA teaching reforms should act as model

Typically a laggard, an opportunity exists for Louisiana to become a policy leader with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s adoption of the full slate of Let Teachers Teach reforms.

Last week, BESE unanimously gave the green light to much of the package of reforms, developed earlier this year by a panel mainly of educators and a few politicians and set to take place early next year. A part of its implementation depended upon legislative action, which occurred during this year’s session of the Louisiana Legislature.

In essence, the package removes bureaucratic hurdles that added little value to, or even detracted from, instructional success. Educators in public schools, echoing national surveys, have been vocal that certain policies and procedures – mainly dealing with student disruptive behavior, too rigid administrative requirements, and duplicative or inefficient activities – hampered their abilities to engage in actual teaching and effectively so.