Marvin credibility increasingly on thin ice

Subsequent to a puzzling exchange at a community meeting, Republican 26^th District Atty. Schuyler Marvin finds himself with a growing no-win political situation in the context of what has happened to a slew of elected officials in Bossier City over the past four years

The parish’s political insiders in the city have had a rough time of it in recent years. First came the 2021 elections, where voters dumped GOP former Mayor Lo Walker and two city councilors, all part of the same cabal with Marvin. And just from qualifying for this year’s round, three others – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free and Democrat Bubba Williams – removed themselves from reelection consideration as public antipathy towards their high-handed style of governance grew, mainly over the issue of their illegally blocking the sending to voters of a petition installing term limits on city elected officials. Two others, Republican Vince Maggio and independent Jeff Darby who also voted on multiple occasions to engage in that illegal action, have drawn opposition to their reelection bids.

After multiple courts chastised the five who broke their oaths of office with these votes, with one panel deeming their actions construable as malfeasance in office which is a felony, perturbed parish residents began petitioning Marvin to investigate the matter or to call in the state to do so. Not that reformers should have much confidence that Marvin should do either, for Marvin – son of a former district attorney – is among the most insider of parish insiders and has a history of protecting allies when his office is put in a situation where it may wade into legal controversy.

Tate tries con job on opposing new NIH cost rule

When you’re playing the big con, your mark can’t know he’s been taken even after he’s been taken. If a recent communiqué by Louisiana State University System Pres. William Tate IV about changing federal regulations about National Institutes of Health grants indicates anything, Tate shows he would excel at utilizing information asymmetrically to score a big payday for his organization.

Last week, the NIH issued new guidelines about how awardees could utilize its grants. It said, barring unusual circumstances to be worked out between NIH and the awardee, that it would typically set indirect costs awarded at a ceiling of 15 percent. Indirect costs are for facilities, or depreciation on buildings, equipment and capital improvements, interest on debt associated with certain buildings, equipment and capital improvements, and operations and maintenance expenses; and administration, or general administration and general expenses such as the director’s office, accounting, personnel, and all other types of expenditures not listed specifically under one of the subcategories of “facilities.”

Typically, past NIH awards to university researchers averaged 27-28 percent in indirect costs, but the new policy impacts all current grants for expenses henceforth starting this week and forward as well as for all new grants issued. And from the reaction from higher education, you would have thought the Earth had stopped turning on its axis.

Cantrell doesn't enjoy last laugh as NO declines

Between the two of them, singer Lauren Daigle is laughing last and loudest compared to Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as another visible decline of the city under recent mayors.

This past weekend, Daigle performed, in well-received fashion, at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. She saw this as vindication for events of over three years ago, when Cantrell made a play to cancel Daigle appearing on the television show Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve that was set to have a satellite location in New Orleans.

Daigle said she was in talks with the production to appear in the hours before 2021 rolled in around Jackson Square, but before anything concrete formed a couple of months prior Daigle on a whim had participated in a concert by a friend there. At the time, orders issued by Cantrell through emergency Wuhan coronavirus pandemic powers limited outdoors gatherings to 50 people with masks (despite that already evidence had accumulated that mandates to wear face coverings outdoors didn’t do a thing to prevent virus spread, and subsequently more confirmation came). The size of the crowd was considerably larger and many didn’t cover their faces.

Make LA civil service panel reform priority

While all of the attention has gone to what control the governor would have over the State Civil Service Commission, ignored has been perhaps a more important change over establishing job classifications that came to light last week, reminding of the necessity of that alteration.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wanted to have the SCSC at its last meeting to change 21 positions, totaling 900 current jobs, in state government from the classified to unclassified service as hired after Jul. 1. Classified positions provide their holders more job security and a defined schedule of compensation, while unclassified employees can be more easily hired and fired and be paid in a greater compensation range.

Landry Administration officials testified that these positions, attorneys and engineers, as classified disallowed offerings of competitive salaries that created shortages and inability into inducing continuity into the workforce. Additionally, compared to public sector employment nationally, Louisiana state government has among the highest per capita number of attorneys and engineers employed, so the plan would be to have the flexibility to pay more and maneuver the number of positions according to market conditions, which almost certainly would mean fewer total jobs than at present.

LA wind energy grifters bray about permit halt

As Republican Pres. Donald Trump enters the third week of his second term in office, Louisiana grifters – including a state representative – aggrieved at Trump’s turning off the firehose of taxpayer benefits to them have started complaining.

Perhaps taking a cue from a recent Associated Press article about Trump’s suspension and review of wind energy permits, the Baton Rouge Advocate pounded out a Louisiana version. Both discussed the presumed economic benefits from allowing wind power construction and generation, while the AP piece added this constituted a rebranded strategy from hyping the alleged threat of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to stressing jobs and economic development from wind power.

The Advocate article echoes the development angle. It parades several individuals involved in or advocating for support industries, including Republican state Rep. Joseph Orgeron, to complain how not only would am embargo on wind power development curtail a nascent Louisiana industry but also in doing so potentially cost the state tax revenues from it.

Risky for LA GOP to endorse for 2026 Senate

Louisiana state Republicans need to acclimate themselves to the new reality of partially closed primaries by making endorsements prior to the primary election rare.

Party leaders have begun an internal debate over whether to follow the strategy of endorsement before the initial election of the 2023 governor’s race as applied 2026 U.S. Senate campaign. It has at this time only two declared candidates, Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy and GOP state Treas. John Fleming, but Fleming has asked the state party – whether through the state central committee that meets quarterly or by an interim decision by its much smaller executive committee – to endorse him along the lines of what the executive committee did almost a year prior to the 2023 race by tabbing Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

The rest is history – other GOP candidates entered, but Landry waxed the field, raising record amounts of cash. This certainly avoided the disastrous repeat of 2015 when two other quality Republicans joined in against the favorite Republican former Sen. David Vitter; while they didn’t prevent him from making the blanket primary runoff, they did fray him around the edges and one, Jay Dardenne, threw his support to eventual winner Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards and was rewarded with the second-ranked job in the executive branch. Neither did the party endorse businessman Eddie Rispone nor former Rep. Ralph Abraham in 2019 and another intermural tussle ensued, with Rispone going through to lose narrowly to Edwards.

Media not taking well Landry's devaluing them

Poor Tyler Bridges, he’s not one of the cool kids anymore and he doesn’t like it. Assuredly, he’s not the only one in Louisiana’s legacy print media.

Bridges, a longtime reporter now working for The Advocate newspaper chain, recently gave readers an idea of how upset he was with Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. For anybody who reads his stuff, if not generally his outlet, or any of (what’s left of) the Gannett outlets in the state, or the only major daily outside of these two combines the Lake Charles American Press, it becomes clear they aren’t fans of the governor.

That their ideological leanings differ from his was something Landry recognized long ago, and as have many conservative politicians around the country he built campaigns and governance around direct communication with people rather than try to cajole a hostile intermediary into saying nice things about him. Indeed, part of this strategy has been to marginalize that conduit of indirect communication.

BC reform train appears primed to leave station

Bossier City takes the spotlight as the only major Louisiana city to have elections this spring – placing in full view a likely drastic reordering of political power.

When the dust settled from qualifying for the Mar. 29 elections, reformers – those who want to keep a lid on city spending especially on low-priority and grandiose projects, exit it from sweetheart deals, and bring greater transparency to governance – appear likely to nab at least a majority on the City Council, if not much more, as well as retain the mayor’s slot with Republican Tommy Chandler.

Chandler was largely ineffective as mayor after ousting long-time and insider mayor Lo Walker, doing little to advance a reform agenda. Debatable is whether this occurred because of his lack of political skills or because he faced on almost every issue five opposing votes that would make at best for a string of symbolic vetoes. But he supported the strict term limits movement to the hilt and with a friendly council he would join them, regardless of his skills, in the cause of reform.

Court reminder halts Monroe Council obstinacy

Don’t be fooled: the Monroe City Council majority Democrats folded on obstructing results of last year’s tax vote because they had received a reminder they had a legal obligation to certify the tax’s passage.

At the Council’s last meeting, it finally approved the one percent sales tax renewed at voters’ behest. Originally set several months ago, after subsequently joining the Council Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad with retuning Democrat Juanita Woods tried unsuccessfully to rescind the authorization. Then, also without unsuccessful, they beseeched voters not to vote for it, claiming it would be a “slush fund” – translated, meaning they wanted it defeated so they could pass a version in a form steering more money to southside Monroe.

Denied in this, at the Jan. 14 meeting they tried the last, most desperate tactic: refuse governing authority promulgation. State law mandates that before forwarding a tax vote to the Secretary of State for final disposition, but without comment the Democrats voted it down.

Most BC graybeards throw in governance towel

Term limits in any form have yet to be approved by Bossier City voters this spring, but the sunshine the issue attracted onto city governance already has them working as intended – if, unfortunately, tardily.

At this time in the 2021 election cycle, city government had a mayor vying for a fifth term, a councilor wanting a third term, three councilors shooting for sixth terms, one gunning for a seventh, and still another asking for an eighth. When the dust settles after these elections, at most only one of these seven will remain in office.

The last election cycle produced some tremors when Republican Tommy Chandler ended the GOP’s Lo Walker’s run as mayor, Republican Shane Cheatham decisively defeated the GOP’s District 1 Councilor Scott Irwin, and Republican Chris Smith knocked out of at-large office GOP Councilor Tim Larkin. This cycle is on the verge of registering an earthquake with graybeards Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free with Democrat Bubba Williams all passing on tries for seventh, fourth, and eighth terms, respectively.