Skrmetta entrance increases Cassidy headache

As another likely competitive candidate enters the Republican Party Senate primary, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy’s chances become dimmer.

This week, Republican Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta joined the fray in challenging Cassidy. The incumbent already faces Republicans Treas. John Fleming and state Sen. Blake Miguez among candidates with the resources to knock him off.

Given Cassidy’s intraparty vulnerability, a third competitive challenger wouldn’t spell out good news for him. Because he placed a wrong bet – he thought GOP Pres. Donald Trump was history after the 2020 loss and, for whatever half-baked reason, decided to hitch his fortunes to Trump’s opponents and to play footsie with Democrats – he essentially divided Louisiana Republicans into three camps: those against him, the modal category; those for him; and those that in the absence of someone they perceive as a quality challenger will stick with him (who likely comprise a big portion of the undecided vote, and some of the Cassidy intended vote).

Disingenuous lies spread on Medicaid reforms

Ignore the panic that the political left tries to foment in Louisiana about changes to Medicaid. Instead, consider how their lies crumble against the reality that the new law will improve program delivery for those who truly need it.

The biggest falsehood to emerge from the left’s talking points is the myth of Medicaid “cuts” (excoriated on the floor of the Senate recently by Republican Sen. John Kennedy). There are absolutely no cuts in Medicaid spending in the reconciliation bill now known as the One Big Beautiful Law. In fact, Medicaid spending is set to increase by an average of three percent annually over the next decade.

Nor will any eligible person lose Medicaid coverage who is a disabled adult or one who has dependents younger than 14. The only change here is that able-bodied adults without all but older dependents will have to meet a community engagement requirement of employment, enrollment in an educational program, or volunteering only 80 hours a month. In fact, most ABAWDs already meet these criteria.

Switch to new accreditor should start now

You don’t need a task force: Republican Gov. Jeff Landry should have simply ordered each university system in Louisiana to prepare for exiting the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges instead of studying the idea of transferring accreditation to the new, depoliticized incipient higher education accreditor the Commission on Public Higher Education, if CPHE is approved.

Last month, six southern states created the CPHE as an alternative to SACSCOC, concerned over the increasingly ideological meddling SACSCOC was enabling as part of the accreditation process. Federal law allows forming such agencies for self-policing of institutions to ensure they provide a legitimate education and have the means to do it, where an institution must be accredited to enjoy federal government largesse such as grants and the ability for students to receive federal government aid.

The effort started in Florida, kicked off when SACSCOC pressured a university system in Georgia and a university in Florida from accepting as candidates for leadership individuals who ideologically appeared at odds with the near-monolithic leftism infused throughout academia. It accelerated when states began to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion schemes as foundational parts of admission, instruction, and employment regimes at institutions. And it came into fruition when Republican Pres. Donald Trump earlier this year issued an executive order to make it easier to transfer among accreditors and to start new ones.

BC debt surge impeded crime reduction spending

The Bossier City Council graybeards may be gone, but the negative impact of their misrule will reverberate for years, even decades, a recent story about public safety demonstrates.

It seems a home security firm called Reolink published data from the first part of 2025 that not only establishes Bossier City as more violent crime-ridden than Shreveport, but also concludes by these metrics that the city is the tenth-most dangerous municipality in Louisiana. It reviewed Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting data for violent and property crimes. (It must be noted that the majority, but not all, of the state’s 304 municipalities complete the UCR, and that crime figures can vary dramatically in different parts of the same city.)

The numbers show that almost five percent of residents will endure a property crime, such as larceny, burglary, and automobile theft, while almost one percent will suffer a violent offense. Shreveport didn’t appear on the list. This outcome turns the argument on its head, often floated by city boosters in and out of office, that a reason to move across the river to Bossier City is it is presumably safer.

Official journal law two-edged sword for papers

There’s another argument increasingly relevant in the longtime practice of state and local governments paying for public notices in an official journal: the economic leverage governments can use against newspapers, as exemplified by recent choices in Caddo Parish.

Last month, all of the major government in the parish – the parish, school district, sheriff’s office, and Shreveport – threw their public notice business to the Shreveport Times. That had to be a lifeline to the Times, which has been in steep decline in readership since the turn of the century, prints just a few pages per edition now (and misses a day a week in print), and has hardly any local staff and hard news coverage.

That turn for the worse accelerated when the privately-owned Georges Media Group planted an affiliate in the area, eating more into the Times’ revenues. The incoming largesse from government will boost its bottom line, although it has backup by being part of the USA Today Gannett Network, owned by a private equity firm.

Taxpayer cuts shouldn't threaten LA public media

Don’t worry about the recent recission of federal funding for public broadcasting insofar as Louisiana Public Broadcasting goes, as if you couldn’t tell from comments made by the organization itself.

Of course, before the Republican Congress triggered the cuts starting Oct. 1, there were all sorts of panicked howls coming from the political left about how the country would fall apart with the billion or so bucks missing from coffers of public broadcasting. This reaction was, or course, disingenuous, such as the argument that rural areas would be cut adrift from emergency warnings when there exist so many other less-costly way it could be done, and without the relentless liberal bias effused through public broadcasting (most recently displayed through woke older social media posts and statements made by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s head and blog posts made last year by a former senior employee outing the virulent leftism within the organization).

Naturally, this crisis on the left isn’t shared by the American people. A recent survey showed nearly half of respondents thought the federal government shouldn’t use taxpayer resources to fund public broadcasting, while only just over a quarter thought it should.

Closed primary hastening GOP registrant takeover

The reintroduction of semi-closed party primary federal elections in Louisiana is hastening the registration decline of state Democrats, with the historical antecedent telling us the other major party the Republicans benefits differently at different times but on course to take over as they state’s largest party to match their overwhelming electoral success.

July figures for voting registrations show Democrats with about a 46,000 lead with 36.7 percent of registrants over the GOP with 35.2 percent. Consider that 21 years ago Democrats more than doubled up Republicans and had a lead approaching a million potential voters, having back then 56.1 percent of all registrants.

However, the state keeps records not published on its website of a subset of active voters or those who haven’t missed two consecutive federal election cycles. John Couvillon of JMC Analytics and Polling, a political research firm, obtained the master file of voters from the state and calculated among active voters Republicans actually now lead in registrations by around 38,000.

Time to send packing Orleans sanctuary sheriff

If you’re going down, you might as well do it clinging to your beliefs as erroneous and contrafactual as they may be, Democrat Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson looks eager to prove.

Hutson has been little more than disastrous in her role mainly of running the Orleans Parish Prison and overseeing those prisoners when off the premises. First coming to fame for monitoring as established by referendum the New Orleans Police Department for irregularities, she has a history very much for a soft on crime approach, although the sheriff’s office doesn’t directly engage in public law enforcement.

A surprise winner over the long-time Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office incumbent in 2021 elections, since then she has embroiled herself in controversy after controversy. These include  opposing a jail expansion that the courts ultimately ordered her to undertake, paying lavishly during Carnival festivities for senior staff and in a manner which violated state and federal law (which she called “misogynistic”), proposing a ballot measure raising taxes hugely only to see it gain support of fewer than 10 percent of voters, suffering a mass jailbreak that appeared a consequence of lax procedures (which she blamed on lack of funds even though the OPSO is sitting on $14 million in reserves), and, perhaps most poetically, gigged by federal jail monitors for deteriorating conditions. Most recently, she was held in contempt of court for failing to provide deputies as required to oversee prisoner courtroom activities on Saturdays.

Term limits bills set parameters for Bossier

If the dynamics present at the Louisiana Legislature this past session remain, the Bossier Parish Police Jury may be a step closer to term limits, thanks to a forthcoming special election.

No parish without a home rule charter has term limits, and among those only Lincoln Parish by statute is authorized to seek them (the allowed referendum never has been called). But Bossier Parish Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh tried to give two parishes a chance to have their police juries potentially subjected to term limits in this past session. One bill, SB 103, would have given Sabine Parish residents a chance to vote on whether to impose a prospective three-term limit prior to the next round of parish elections, while SB 113 originally would have done the same retrospectively for De Soto at some indeterminate date. Seabaugh represents the southern half of De Soto and all of Sabine.

The De Soto Police Jury previously on a couple of occasions had voted on the issue, most recently at the beginning of last year where a narrow majority resolved to ask for the citizen vote on term limits applied to them. By contrast, the Sabine Police Jury had just a couple of its members articulating a desire for limits with the remainder in opposition, but a significant portion of the public voiced support, as reflected in communications with Seabaugh and through a local radio talk show. The Jury has been a consistent magnet for criticism in recent years, featuring its insistence on raising taxes, citizens rejecting tax propositions several times at the ballot box, accusations of wasteful spending especially on a new library, ineptness in dealing with grant monies, and calls for resignations of if not recall petitions filed against multiple jurors.

Monroe Council games continue with tax hike

The Monroe City Council majority Democrats want to raise Monrovians’ taxes in their quest not only to secure reelection but also to push independent Mayor Friday Ellis out of office.

 

At its last meeting, the Council failed to ratify property tax rates for this year. Typically, local governments in Louisiana do this in June and July, which then gives parish assessors time to calculate and send out assessment notices and go through the appeal process before making the rolls final by November, with property owners’ payments due by the end of the year.

 

Instead, Council Democrats Rodney McFarland, Verbon Muhammad, and Juanita Woods rejected the measure, which provokes a small crisis. Instead, they wanted to raise rates using the “roll forward” option. That requires a public hearing that has to follow public notice laws, meaning it will be at least a month before that can occur. This delays considerably the process and means that final notices will be late. The process cannot start until the Jul. 22 meeting.

 

Muhammad, noting the Council had previously continued a vote on millages, complained that the Ellis Administration didn’t submit to the Council an agenda item to roll forward, claiming the majority’s preference to raise taxes had been articulated previously. Of course, while typically ordinances come from administration, councilors may place their own on the agenda.

 

Although Monroe collects several different property taxes, almost all are for discrete purposes and almost all are at their adjusted maximum millage, which is the rate to which the Council could raise by a simple majority. Conspicuously, the one millage that both is general and not at its adjusted maximum is the general alimony at 10.18 mills presently.

 

Muhammad made vague mention of spending he claimed was needed and alleged the hike would pour another $1 million into city coffers. That seems consistent with a raise to the maximum authorized millage, but which requires a two-thirds majority that Republicans Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack seem unlikely to approve. Boosting to the adjusted maximum, or 11.99 mills, would raise around $828,000. However, if the maximum authorized, or 12.35 mills (and most of the others have a slightly higher maximum authorized than adjusted maximum), is not attained by the end of the assessment period, then it cannot be reached again unless quadrennial reassessment reveals an overall decrease in city property values.

 

The Council majority could push through the lower hike, but then as an ordinance Ellis could veto it and with the minority’s support sustain that. Yet this would launch a game of chicken that threatens to disrupt entirely the city’s ability to collect property taxes for this year.

 

Throughout, the majority seemed blithely unconcerned that they wanted the city to swipe extra money from the citizenry. Its thinking is entirely political: increase programmatic spending disproportionately in their districts — to their constituents and to related special interests — especially as, because theirs overall have lower property values than the minority’s districts, owners in their districts would pay disproportionately less of the increase.

 

Meanwhile, in 2028 citizens might take out their vexation over the hike on Ellis as mayor, the city’s most visible politician. It’s the same bad faith the majority has practiced over the past year, exemplified again in the meeting when the Council passed without any councilor comment a measure to match a state grant to improve Jackson Street. This came after the prior meeting when McFarland in particular extensively hinted at sinister motives behind Ellis pursuing this matter of about a dozen years’ standing and surreptitiously despite the administration’s above-board informative efforts.

 

That what was so controversial one meeting becomes nothing worthy of discussion the next again demonstrates it’s all political theater with this crowd, that appears to treat Ellis’ mayoralty as an illegitimate aberration standing in the way of its redistributive politics.