Call extra session in 2024 before court deadline

Louisiana’s reapportionment saga rumbles on, now with the politics of electoral succession mixed in.

Last week, after the U.S. Supreme Court the previous month had ruled a district court that originally at the behest of special interests had ruled invalid the state’s latest congressional reapportionment had moved too fast to impose an alternative, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel drew up a calendar for state action on the matter. It said the state had to come up with a new map by Jan. 15, although the “district court will also have discretion to grant limited additional time if requested,” or else then a redraw would fall to that court.

This creates an interesting political timeline. Jan. 8 will turn over a new Legislature and install Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry as governor. An extraordinary session would be required, since the regular session won’t convene until mid-March. There’s general agreement that the new batch of elected officials should handle the matter, as they will have to deal with the aftermath of anything that happens as a result of any actions, or inaction, taken.

Veterans' Day, 2023

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 Sunday through Thursday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Easter, 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 Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Saturday, Nov. 11 being Veterans' Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

Competitive Caddo contests cued in runoffs

Somewhat surprising results in October Caddo Parish elections left some very competitive runoff contests on Nov. 18.

The sheriff’s race to replace retiring Republican Sheriff Steve Prator classifies as one of these – not surprising that it produced a runoff between Republican former Shreveport Councilor John Nickelson and Democrat former Shreveport police chief and chief administrative officer Henry Whitehorn, but surprising that Nickelson pulled 45 percent, 10 points clear of Whitehorn in a race on paper that favors the Democrat. A major factor here appears to be differentially reduced turnout between partisans, with Democrats more likely not to have voted. If that pattern repeats, and it may well given Prator and his considerable influence backed Nickleson, the general election leader will win.

However, this hot race may affect the dynamics of other contests in the parish, although few remain unsettled. While most parish commission races drew multiple candidates, only one had more than two. Incumbents and favorites held off challengers – including past District 8 Democrat appointed Commissioner Ronald Cothran, who ran in District 10 this time and barely knocked off two challenging Democrats, including one who barely lost four years ago – the only big surprise came with District 1 Republican Todd Hopkins losing to the GOP’s Chris Kracman in the race with the highest turnout. A gerrymander solidly favoring Democrats created almost no interparty competition, leaving only one contest not internecine and all settled without a runoff.

Don't let carbon capture, hydrogen mania cost LA

It’s not going so well for climate alarmists in Louisiana at the other end of the continuum, either.

While one strand of alarmism focuses on a ruthless propagation of non-fossil fuel-based sources for energy, no matter the costs or inconvenience, another seeks to mitigate fossil fuel outputs, such as carbon and methane, by circumventing or diverting production of these in the energy production process. Two such tools in pursuit of the latter are hydrogen and carbon capture use and sequestration.

Hydrogen can be used as a method to carry another fuel or by itself, burning without natural carbon dioxide or methane release unless the process of its production – it rarely exists in nature purely, so otherwise it has to be detached from some other elements like from oxygen in water – causes this. CCS works around processing release by collecting it before atmospheric emission, in making hydrogen or straight combustion.

BC has chance to improve contracted services

New owner, but same old Manchac Consulting Group: shielded by its political allies on the Bossier City Council, it continues to enjoy privileged status and an ever-deeper reach into Bossier City taxpayers’ pocketbooks that an embattled Council majority bloc wants to impose without considering any other options.

The firm that has worked on Bossier City projects since 2010 and which took over public works through a formal public-private partnership agreement in 2016 a couple of months ago was bought out by Waggoner Engineering but remains as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Waggoner is based in Jackson, MS but for many years has had a Louisiana presence in Baton Rouge where Manchac is located. It and its original owner and founder Joe Waggoner and his affiliated companies have been active in donations to Louisiana politicians of both parties (although more often Democrats) for statewide, legislative, and local offices, but have concentrated local candidate giving in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

This may explain the more aggressive search for business Manchac recently has undertaken. As the merger was being negotiated, it offered its services to the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, and appears actively to be searching for other opportunities.

Avoid gouging LA taxpayers, ratepayers over wind

Rather than driving Louisiana energy customer bills sky high, the new Legislature and incoming Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration need to cut off at the pass special interests and rent seekers.

Regarding accelerating use of offshore wind-generated power to meet arbitrary goals applauded by climate alarmists, both Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and Democrat Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards haven’t had a good few months. Biden wanted 30 gigawatts of power capacity nationally from wind by 2030, and Edwards shot for 5 GW by 2035. At present, U.S. capacity stands at 150 MW at one location off of Rhode Island.

The story goes that these installations provide lots of jobs to build and few costs to maintain, staying out of almost everybody’s way. To jag along this development, Biden had a then-Democrat-controlled Congress lard up almost $11 billion dedicated to offshore wind expansion and dangle various tax credits from 10 to 30 percent for those involved in production and support of offshore wind power generation. Some states, but not Louisiana, added their own incentives.

Election results strengthen Seabaugh influence

Early voting has started for the Nov. 18 runoff elections for state and local offices in Louisiana, but that doesn’t need resolution to declare the biggest winner in northwest Louisiana elections this cycle: Republican state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, who is emerging as the region’s kingmaker.

Who will become state senator for District 31 in a couple of months in a far-flung district anchored in southern Bossier and Caddo Parishes, which together will have the plurality of population, and extending south. For a region, that is one of the higher-profile elected offices to attain, but more impressively is the strength Seabaugh showed at gaining it.

Known as an unwavering limited government conservative, that and his take-no-prisoners style of advancing his policy objectives has created many enemies on the political left and among get-along-go-along Republicans in name only. They banded to find a popular non-politician malleable enough to carry their water in retired collegiate basketball coach Republican Mike McConathy. Not only had his time on the hardwood in Bossier and Natchitoches Parishes built up considerable positive name recognition, but his father had served as Bossier school superintendent.

Edwards confirms bad policy new BESE must change

It’s tough to keep Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards from giving Louisiana the middle-fingered salute when he’s determined, and that’s why the new Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will have to fix the mess of its predecessor, amplified by Edwards.

Last month, BESE narrowly passed into regulation a new policy that relaxes graduation requirements by allowing for an appeal process for failure to achieve (very low) minimums on standardized testing. Of the few states that have this component in their requirements, Louisiana was the only one that didn’t have an appeals process for that component.

Now it does, but this has numerous deficiencies as part of a extremely subjective, nebulous process with little accountability. Those aspects were brought forth in a House Education Committee meeting after publication in the Louisiana Register. State law allows specified committees to perform oversight of specified kinds of regulations five to 30 days after the Register published, which may then veto the regulation in question.

Surplus start for Landry to dodge poison pills

The gift for incoming governor Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry is both not enough to help much with the trap set by spendthrifts leaving office in two months and a way to kickstart Louisiana towards better economic development possibilities, if Landry and new GOP legislative leaders plan well.

Last month, the required report seeking to close the books on the previous fiscal year showed a surplus for fiscal year 2023 of $330 million. That amount will be fine-tuned before the end of the year, and available for action by the new Legislature next year.

Sort of. Constitutionally, any surplus not in the current year can go only a half-dozen uses, and a portion gets taken right off the top mandatorily. A quarter goes to the Budget Stabilization Fund while a tenth goes towards paying off unfunded accrued liabilities in pension funds (this will increase to a quarter courtesy of a constitutional amendment passed last month, but starting with FY 2025).

Conservative LA govt to affect media environment

The old aphorism that you never should quarrel with somebody who buys ink by the barrel may become less and less valid with the ascension of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry to Louisiana governor next year.

Landry won outright the contest earlier this month and has hit the ground running. Among the things he has begun preparing for is influencing the new Legislature, set to have supermajorities of his party in both chambers, in its selection of leadership with which he is comfortable. Already his expressed preference for GOP state Sen. Cameron Henry appears to have landed Henry the Senate presidency for next term.

But there’s still a House speakership up for grabs, with multiple reports that Landry hasn’t stumped for a particular individual but did provide input, accepted by the chamber’s GOP, that it settle upon one candidate and that the membership vote only for that candidate when the time comes in early January. In fact, Landry’s transition office released a letter, signed by every Republican attempting to win that vote and Landry, agreeing to that. This will prevent a scenario such as in 2020 when a Republican-preferred Republican lost out to a Democrat-preferred Republican in the speaker’s contest, which diluted GOP efforts to enact a conservative agenda over the course of the term.

This story was reported succinctly from The Hayride website, known as a conservative opinion site whose articles also contain news. Almost simultaneously, about 11 hours after the letter was produced, a story on the subject appeared on the Louisiana Illuminator site, ostensibly a news site but which injects left-wing opinion into its designated news articles.

Except that story was much less complete and accurate about the events reported by The Hayride, written by its publisher Scott McKay. Julia O’Donoghue, who once covered state politics for the New Orleans Times-Picayune before it was subsumed into the Baton Rouge Advocate chain, authored that one, which only mentioned the apparent half-dozen speaker candidates – actually a later addition to the piece, where the original had mentioned only two – met with Landry, without any mention of an agreement or what it constituted or who was involved.

It's obvious what happened – the Hayride scooped the Illuminator because the speaker candidates kept O’Donoghue in the dark while alerting McKay, whom Landry also contacted. Landry generally is a fan of Hayride pieces for its analysis of Louisiana politics and the site is viewed widely by GOP legislators. By contrast, Illuminator pieces often attempt to criticize conservative issue preferences, sometimes being extremely selective in the information and data reported to slant stories if not making inaccurate assertions, to prop up a leftist agenda.

Landry’s campaign frequently gave many media outlets short shrift, particularly those it felt tending to inject bias against him particularly and Republicans and conservatives generally. He and his campaign generally ignored Illuminator attempts for information and sometimes stiffed the Advocate and Gannett newspapers as well. He only participated in one of several televised candidate forums organized by various media outlets and interest groups, apparently without harming his campaigning.

This isn’t that surprising as technology increasingly gives candidates and government officials the ability to cut out intermediaries like the media to go directly to voters and citizens, while preserving them the option to reward favored outlets with in-depth news and leaving others flailing. As the media environment has become harsher for survival of traditional outlets with readership declines, having a politician treating an outlet unfavorably has reversed the relationship. Instead of the media being able to savage officials who were uncooperative, now officials can starve the media of the information that grabs consumers with little penalty but which causes difficulty for the media they ignore.

Of course, the two channels can intertwine. On several occasions, Landry authored opinion pieces that appeared on The Hayride. And officials have the ability to cooperate selectively, as demonstrated since the election with Landry and other Republicans appearing more willing at least toanswer Illuminator inquiries.

Regardless, within weeks from now in Louisiana media outlets that traditionally have shown hostility towards a conservative agenda, whether confined to opinion pieces, may find their news gathering in the realm of politics significantly more challenging and operating at a disadvantage to outlets that have demonstrated more tolerance, if not affinity, for disseminating news and opinion that put conservative issue preferences in a favorable light. Actual reporting, not mere stenography of talking points released by leftist interests, might become more common among Louisiana’s media.