Closed primaries: more accountability if fewer run

If you expect candidate choice to go down significantly as a result of Louisiana expanding its (semi-)closed primary election roster, you would be wrong. If you think it would increase accountability, you’d be right.

Starting next year, closed primary elections return for federal offices and will become implemented for Public Service Commission and Supreme Court seats. But along with that, qualification methods changed beyond what was necessary to create a primary system.

Until now, to qualify under the blanket primary system, candidates had two options: get up a petition turned in by a certain date with varying numbers of signatures and locations of signers depending upon the office, or just pay up a certain amount during qualification that varied in amount as to office and what category of political party, if any, in which the candidate would enroll where the two major parties had the highest fees. Both methods remain but now are very different.

Against past type, BC better on pickleball

There is the right way of government doing business and the wrong way. Bossier City did it the right way and Caddo Parish didn’t when it comes to going from zero to 30 pickleball courts in the area.

In September, the Caddo Parish Commission voted to sink $10 million into building a 19-court facility. The appropriation would come in the from of a revenue bond, which means the parish has the chance of being paid back, as user fees it hopes will cover the principal and interest. Even if that happens, the parish will have indirect costs in putting the deal together and keeping the operation of it going, as it plans to farm out the managerial task.

This is the biggest part of the scam, as the facility will be built, and likely not opening until 2027, on land leased by the Northwest Louisiana YMCA at one of its locations, which will be the operator. In other words, the Y is leveraging parish government to get itself built for free a facility it eventually will own.

LA higher education win over DEI far from certain

Declaring victory too soon can lead to an ultimate defeat, the Louisiana Board of Regents chairwoman should know.

Recently, Regent Misti Cordell, who last year was appointed to the Board and ascended to its top position, declared and end to the state’s battle against institutionalized diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in higher education. These efforts, whether in the form of programmatic attempts to privilege students and faculty members on the basis of protected characteristic categories, usually by race, or in the form of behavioral requirements to do the same such as forcing job applicants to explain how they would do that, have stoked controversy as they rely upon the hypothesis that government and societal institutions are irredeemably racist or discriminate against others in certain protected classes, requiring discrimination in favor of the alleged victim classes that thereby becomes discrimination, if not harassment, against those not members of the favored classes.

Cordell asserted that “the DEI nonsense is DONE. The Legislature killed it. The Regents stripped it out. Louisiana is not going back. If it shows up in old paperwork, that doesn’t change the reality – those bad ideas belong to the past, not our future.” But little of that statement actually is the case in any permanent sense.

Case for LA film tax credits weaker than ever

Even the presence of tariffs doesn’t seem likely to halt the root wastefulness of Louisiana’s Motion Picture Production tax credit that doesn’t change through many its iterations — especially when there are better uses for that money coming out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Republican Pres. Donald Trump has reiterated his threat to place tariffs on movies made in foreign countries. Increasingly, film production has moved out of the country, mainly because of lower labor costs. However, the mechanics of doing so don’t lend themselves well to setting up a regime that would provide the benefits of protectionism. And part of the problem also is the falling tide of movie-making and television series because of the rise of streaming services that empty theaters and keep people from surfing the dial as demand for that kind of product diminishes.

Workable tariffs could help Louisiana’s film and television production, which has been losing ground relative to other locations both foreign and domestic. Part has to do with changes last year to the tax credit, which had its cap lowered from $150 million annually to $125 million even as other states are raising theirs. But foreign competition has been most challenging, and not just impacting negatively the state but other states as well.

Elected chiefs bad idea in Monroe, anywhere

Monroe’s politically contentious fire chief appointment saga shouldn’t be the impetus to opening the door to greater folly in the quest for the political power by other elected officials.

After a year-plus political tussle between independent Mayor Friday Ellis and a Democrat-majority City Council over naming a new fire chief, with the Council majority rejecting two appointees for somewhat conflicting reasons, the deadlock was broken this month when Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, under authority granted him by a law backed by Ellis, appointed one of the two Ellis nominees previously rejected. The issue took an ugly turn when members of the Council majority, who are black, called Ellis, who is white, “anti-black” because both nominees are white who would head up a department in a city whose population is almost two-thirds black.

In the wake of the resolution, two of the majority, Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad, speculated that perhaps Monroe, in a move that would require changing the city charter, should have both its police and fire chiefs chosen at the ballot box. That’s an idea that if it ever made it onto the ballot should be rejected by voters.

Recent act adds impetus for jettisoning RTOs in LA

And this is why, even if it became the first state to adopt an anti-renewable portfolio standard, Louisiana isn’t out of the woods from its energy policy being affected in negative ways by other states’ faith in the existence of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

This summer, the state passed a law that essentially made it state policy to pursue the most reliable and inexpensive energy as possible. By doing so, it disallowed the Public Service Commission if it ever desired to do so from trying to impose an RPS on power utilities operating in the state. An RPS would force production of that power through the use of renewable resources to reach a certain proportion of all produced. Almost half of states have one, and in some the eventual target as early as 2040 is 100 percent.

As the higher the proportion of renewable sources reaches the more average expense is attached to that production for consumers, because of both the technology required and the vastly higher degree of production unreliability endemic to relying on renewable resources, Louisiana’s new law guards against consumers having to bear this burden just to kowtow to the myth of CAGW that increased renewable sourcing theoretically alleviates. But, as a recent incident illustrates, state boundaries can’t stop foisting the unneeded RPS costs onto ratepayers’ power suppliers not even subject to an RPS.

New LA bishops bring hope to resolving bad pasts

It’s been an interesting month for Louisiana Catholics in the state’s southeastern corner, hopefully presaging the beginning of the end for turbulent times.

The pederasty – and make no mistake, that’s what it is as 75-80 percent of all sexual abuse cases known against priests involved male minors – that was tolerated among a small coterie of priests (about four percent of the total) claimed an unfortunately high total of victims in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. So much so that the archdiocese declared bankruptcy to avoid financial ruin and shamefully has been lowballing a settlement.

But earlier this month a new offer of $230 million was made to the several hundred members of the affected class. If enough accept, the settlement will become official.

Prudent BC budget still must avoid landmines

Bossier City’s 2026 executive budget exemplifies a greater commitment to transparency, and in doing so highlights the sins of its policy-making past and warnings to avoid their consequences  in the future.

The budget doesn’t see much increased spending past the expected 2025 baseline, although reviewing general fund numbers might belie that. This is because of an accounting change that moves expenses for all of the ancillary functions attached to the sanitation fee on utilities bills that the general public mostly associates with trash pickup. That became a controversial point over the rate increases instituted this year where apartment complexes that previously had been billed for only a few addresses, or even just one, the city began to bill for all units. Complex owners argued that they had their own waste removal and so shouldn’t have to pay, but they discounted the ancillary functions the fee covers such things as mosquito abatement, sweeping and mowing, beautification, and animal control.

A compromise was reached that billed at 80 percent of total units. Perhaps as a result, the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration now plans to budget separately for those items and transfers their functions to Public Works. Thus, the portion of the sanitation fee that covers these functions for bookkeeping purposes now appears in the general fund, inflating year-over-year spending. It’s the right move to make for greater transparency and accountability.

Bizarre postcard incident defies obvious motive

A bizarre incident involving Louisiana legislators leaves perhaps only one thing for certain: the sender(s) of so-called “lynching postcards” seem to have caught a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that makes the act appear inexplicable using reason and logic.

Recently, several representatives – all Republicans except for a Democrat and apparently chosen in alphabetical order, various reports reveal – received in their official mail two kinds of postcards depicting lynchings, with one identified as nearly a hundred years ago in Indiana and the other over a century ago in Minnesota. They state “Thank you” have Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s name attached to them, and were sent from Denver.

This raises many questions. Why Louisianans? Why only representatives? Why just names close to the beginning of the alphabet and sent to official addresses as if plucked from the website? Why is Noem’s name attached? Why depicting lynching? Why the scrawled sarcastic message? Perhaps these and others will be answered as the Federal Bureau of Investigation has gotten involved because this could be construed as a threat using the postal service. Even if no threat is determined to be present, the Comstock Act as amended makes it illegal to send these through the mail.

Monroe Council Democrats play race card on pick

As always when it’s dealt, the majority Democrats on the Monroe City Council played the race card from the bottom of the deck, exposing their misbegotten and counterproductive agenda.

Last week, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Monroe’s new fire chief would be Timothy Williams. A new law gave him the power to do this, breaking a stalemate between the Council majority and independent Mayor Friday Ellis stretching past a year where the Council rejected two of his appointees.

The majority gave somewhat conflicting reasons for their rejections. Ellis’ first choice, Monroe Fire Department’s Daniel Overturf scored middling on the civil service exam and the majority said the city could do better, despite his strong rank-and-file backing. Williams, Bastrop’s fire chief, scored highest on the exam, as well as had a strong record in Bastrop, but then the Democrats switched their objection to he didn’t have managerial experience in a larger department. But besides having their candidacies sidelined by the Democrats, who are all black, the two had something else in common: both, like Ellis, are white.