LA schools best heed Brumley's advice on new rule

Louisiana’s local education agencies should heed State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley’s advice to disregard new and radical rulemaking from the federal Department of Education that likely is unconstitutional that conflicts with present and likely Louisiana law.

Last week, the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration released its recodification of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which lays down rules to which state-regulated (because the U.S. Constitution grants states the power to regulate education provision) education provision must adhere in order tor receive federal grants. The sweeping and unprecedented changes it had telegraphed with its initial filing last year and reinvented Title IX only four years after substantial revision had occurred.

The purpose was to expand coverage, despite the clear wording of statute denying that, of nondiscriminatory classes, redefining “sex” to, among other things, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” It tried to justify this deviance by referring to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated area of law, and almost certainly is unconstitutional for that overreach. Any attempt to deny funding for not following the rule if challenged would lead to the regulation’s overturn by the judiciary.

Shreveport voters face tough call on tax hikes

It’s a tough call this Saturday on Shreveport approving property tax hikes – necessary bromide or throwing good money after bad?

Across three proposals, the city plans to raise around $256 million for capital items. Almost half would go towards roads, streets, bridges, and surface and subsurface drainage systems (2.45 mills), while nearly a third would go to water and sewerage systems (1.6 mills), with the remainder going to public safety, buildings, and recreation (0.95 mills). Unlike measures to fund continuing government operations, the millages will vary depending upon bond issuance amounts and timings, with the city estimating 2027 would be the first year initial millages would be added to tax bills. Eventually, it predicts the total millage almost will double to close to 8 mills.

Regardless, success of any item at the polls will push Shreveport further into the category of the highest-taxed city without consolidated government in Louisiana. Republican current Mayor Tom Arceneaux’s predecessor Democrat Adrian Perkins three times attempted to have bond issues, around that neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars give or take a few dozen millions, in various packages gain voter approval. His first attempt resulted in complete rejection at the polls, his second couldn’t get City Council assent, and in his third only one of five measures, about $71 million dedicated to public safety, passed voter muster.

For Bossier voters, "no" in quadruplicate

For different reasons, Bossier Parish voters should reject all four property tax renewals on Saturday’s ballot and tell the various powers-that-be to try again before it’s too late.

Bossier City has two such items on tap, both of which are identically dedicated to public safety operations and maintenance. Both are ten years in length starting in 2026, pitched at current levies (rolled back from previous authorized maximums, as property values have risen in recent years) of 8.32 and 2.71 mills that would generate about $8.6 million in annual revenue. These do not cover salaries, which are supplemented by a 5.98 mill measure approved at 6.19 mills in 2020.

The city was smarter this time around than back then. Four years ago, with that millage then set at 6.00, in essence it allowed for a future tax increase by the city asking for 6.19 and received negative publicity for that although the measure passed. Then as now, it occurred within a year of city elections; the next year the mayor and two city councilors got dumped by voters. So, this time the city pinned the renewals at the current rates, and hopes the assessment report from the parish that soon will be completed will show increased values and allow for a roll back later this year, just in time for elections next year.

Pass bill to rein in higher education subversion

Perhaps the most important bill under the radar in this year’s regular session of the Louisiana Legislature would rein in excesses against free expression in the state’s higher education system.

SB 486 by Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh would prohibit preferential treatment based upon race, color, ethnicity, national origin, political affiliation, or sex; discrimination in the recruitment or admission of students or in the recruitment or employment of employees; requiring as a condition of admission or employment that the applicant submit an ideological statement; promoting instruction that the moral character, racial attitudes, and responsibility or guilt for past group actions of an individual is determined by race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or sex; and would ban compelled expression contrary to a student’s personal political ideas or affiliation.

During a Senate Education Committee hearing last week, Seabaugh noted behaviors the bill would prevent at present occur at state institutions. Several examples he drew from Louisiana State University, despite a fake pullback from formal diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies and information dissemination, moves publicized in leftist media. He emphasized that bureaucratic name changes and public removal of media that glorified what the bill would make illegal hadn’t stopped these practices behind the scenes.

Times change, Bossier illegal behavior doesn't

A whole generation goes by, and nothing changes for Bossier Parish apparently playing fast and loose with the law when it comes to squeezing money from the citizenry.

The Bossier Watch transmission of Apr. 16 contained a couple of minutes of commentary and video of a sign reading “VOTE SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 BOSSIER PARISH LIBRARIES” planted near a roadway. The hosts recounted they had seen some around, although the exact location of this one was unknown. On that date is the spring municipal runoff elections in Louisiana, where a 7.43 mils property tax renewal to fund Bossier Parish libraries reengaging in 2026 for 10 years is the one item that will appear on ballots parish-wide.

What follows is a reprint of a post I made at my Louisiana-centric blog site, Between the Lines, on Dec. 30, 2010 that reviewed events of four years previous. (Keep in mind nearly 18 years ago that the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway stopped at the southern end of the now-Brookshire Grocery Arena). It’s amazing how little things (and people involved) change:

Bill to deny foundational CRT prevents hatred

If nothing else, SB 262 by Republican state Sen. Valarie Hodges would inhibit in Louisiana racial division and hatred.

The bill, currently passed out of the Senate into the House of Representatives, would add to the state’s Parental Bill of Rights that schools “shall not discriminate against their child by teaching the child that the child is currently or destined to be oppressed or to be an oppressor based on the child's race or national origin.” This addresses the use of critical race theory, or the idea that racism is pervasive in all societal institutions shaped historically by, if not currently dominated by, people of Caucasian ancestry, as the foundational tool by which to shape instruction.

Similar to Marxism, CRT bases itself on a series of unfalsifiable, if not empirically unverifiable or logically suspect, propositions that if questioned automatically connotes racist actions (or, if the analyzer is non-white, axiomatic of a false consciousness), making the whole enterprise intellectually lazy and devoid of true scholarship. It increasingly has become a tool by those ideologically compatible with its policy aims – strong government action to level differences in outcomes of resource allocations – for instruction from the academy on down.

Unrepentant left still opposing children's needs

Don’t expect apologies from Louisiana’s leftist institutions and activists having now been caught out on supporting the erroneous “gender affirmation” model of addressing difficulties faced by a small number of youths, which state policy-makers continue to address.

The tiny proportion of youths who express “gender dysphoria,” or a feeling their mental maps of themselves are incongruent with their physical sex, has multiplied in numbers over the past decade. Until then, from the last part of the 20^th century medical professionals addressed this through watchful waiting as children, perhaps with psychological therapy, sorted out their feelings. Data indicated that feelings of this dysphoria were highly related to, if not a reflection of, other psychological maladies and that most children by their adult years shed the condition.

But in the early 21^st century the competing “gender affirmation” model developed in the U.S. and was exported globally. Over time the approach became more radicalized, dictating that even the youngest children who appeared to see themselves associated with typical conceptions of one physical sex while the other, whether consciously picking up on any cues to do that from adults called in to evaluate them, had to be catered to with social and even physical interventions to physically alter them to the sex with which they identified at that particular point in time.

Protest restriction bill enhances expression

Don’t be misled by the usual suspects’ disingenuous blather about “free speech.” HB 737 by Republican state Rep. Kellee Dickerson doesn’t inhibit that; rather, it promotes free expression.

The bill would prohibit picketing near a person’s residence which interferes with, disrupts, threatens to disrupt, or harasses the individual's right to control, use, or enjoy his residence, and has passed the Louisiana House of Representatives. Leftist critics have bemoaned its progress, calling its potential application overbroad by not allowing protesting on the street or right-of-way and potentially an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and assembly.

As to constitutionality, that’s a moot point, because Louisiana already has on its books a very similar law. R.S. 14:401, the law for decades, prohibits demonstrations near residences of judges, jurors, trial witnesses, or court officers, and it’s never faced a challenge. Legally, the judiciary recognizes that people engaged in official business of the state have a right when not performing official business not to have their lives disrupted at a nonpublic place.

Ten Commandments bill to present needed test

Despite protestations of opponents not quite up on things, as long as Louisiana treads carefully a bill working its way through the Legislature will have the practical effect of displaying a legal-paper-sized copy of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, and even some private school ones, from kindergarten on up and deemed constitutional.

HB 71 by Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton would mandate this. The bill states that they can use public funds or accept donated copies. Further, any private school that accepts state funds, which at present would be some nonpublic elementary and secondary education schools and perhaps even private colleges, would be subject to the same. The bill passed the House of Representatives with few dissenters and now moves along to the Senate.

Misperceptions about the issue abound. For one thing, two states already have such laws in place (and several others are considering these). Less demonstrative is North Dakota’s, now three years old, which simply states that local school boards can order this along with a display of other historical documents. In place for about a couple of decades, South Dakota’s leaves open in the public school system the authority to place a copy as long as it is not too conspicuous, giving the option the post other documents of cultural, legal, and historical significance as well.

Work needed on college pricing autonomy bill

On its surface a bill before the Louisiana Legislature that might aid higher education, HB 862, if not changed would backfire, if not undermine, in deliverance of quality tertiary education.

The bill, by Democrat state Rep. Jason Hughes, would grant institutions the ability to establish and raise fees and differential tuition, the former across the board and the latter for more expensive and/or high-demand programs. These could increase up to ten percent annually. This would relax the constitutional standard that legislative supermajorities only could raise these.

The strategy here rightly emphasizes that raising revenues for higher education must come from its consumers. While Louisiana higher education isn’t where it was a quarter-century ago when it had about the lowest tuition in the country and consequentially an enormous relative taxpayer subsidy to public colleges, the corrective measures that begun about 15 years ago to right the imbalance faltered in recent years. At present, the state still ranks only 30^th among its brethren in average senior-level tuition charged – which overstates because around 28 percent of in-state undergraduates enjoy Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars awards that pay for tuition and varying amounts of fees.

Bills challenge local govts, especially Bossier

A number of local governmental bodies and elected officials, especially from Bossier Parish, won’t be happy if a few bills addressing local government organization and actions pass into law this spring.

As always, the Legislature takes up matters that affect local governance, but this year such general bills would have greater impact on entities and politicians in Bossier than comparatively elsewhere. Of minor importance is HB 103 by Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson, which would mandate live broadcasting of meetings by bodies with jurisdictions of at least 25,000 people, but for municipalities just 10,000. It retains the requirement of archived audio or video or live transmission of meetings by any authority that can tax.

Bossier affected entities – the Bossier City Council, the Bossier Parish Police Jury, and the Bossier Parish School Board – already transmit live. But if the bill were to be amended to demand archived meetings available on the Internet, that could put entities into difficulty that do recordings but don’t currently make these available on a web site, such as the Bossier Levee District.

Landry on target with anthem respect request

Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry got it just right in his reaction to a controversy – somewhat chance in nature – over public universities’ responsibilities to have their athletes acknowledging affirmatively the country whose citizens are paying their way.

It all started when in a women’s basketball championship tournament game observers noticed the Louisiana State University squad wasn’t on the floor standing to respect the playing of the national anthem, while the opposition was. That absence had been typical of LSU for some time as its pregame routine as structured precluded that, but nobody really had paid attention to this before.

When national media began to publicize it, Landry weighed in that the state’s higher education governing boards should implement policies requiring scholarship athletes to stand respectfully during the anthem. He argued the least a university’s competitive athletes could do was respect the symbol under which Americans had sacrificed to protect the country and the ideas associated with its founding. He also asked the governing body for many intercollegiate competitions the National Collegiate Athletic Association to implement a rule like that.

Convention as envisioned good but tricky

If kept within the intended parameters, the (very) limited constitutional convention envisioned by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and legislative supporters best should happen this summer.

HB 800 by GOP state Rep. Beau Beaullieu would convene the conclave in the middle of May and give its two months duration, composed of legislators plus 27 selections made by Landry. It would be limited only to removal of parts of the existing document, adhering to an argument that its size and ensuing inflexibility needs paring to increase legislative policy options that can address state needs. The idea would be to jettison sections that then could be teed up to become statute, if not altered or ignored, with the changed document if approved by voters later this year to become effective in 2025.

Skepticism is warranted over the convention’s composition, of elected officials and political appointees. One reason why fiscal reform is so difficult and needed in Louisiana is the straitjacket made by the Constitution, but that’s something many elected officials don’t really mind. Its inflexibility gives them an excuse from making hard decisions in raising revenue and allocating it. The state never has had a revenue problem, but a spending problem in part because officials point to the Constitution and claim they have to spend money in certain ways, thus they declare themselves not responsible when more important things capture less funding and low priority items get too much, or revenues are raised in inefficient ways.

More evidence of Edwards' dark days receding

Rightly the negative legacy of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards for the most part continues to slip into the sea, as the latest sign confirming the ruinous nature of Edwards’ regime reveals.

Last month, S&P Global Ratings raised Louisiana’s bond rating a notch. It now sits at AA, the third-highest, considered investment grade but with some nontrivial long-term risk. It’s the first change since a 2017 downgrade, and follows on an increase from Aa3 to Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Services in 2022 to the third highest ranking and the first change since a downgrade in 2016. The third major credit reviewer, Fitch, hasn’t made any changes since it downgraded the state’s debt in 2016.

It's instructive to know the timeline here. Hamstrung by a sputtering national economy throughout the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama and in the later years at the state level stung by declines in oil prices even as for the most part Louisiana’s economy did better than the national throughout Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s terms, in his last year Jindal got the Legislature to go along with tax increases. Understand that Jindal tried to reduce state spending by making government more efficient, but even when the GOP captured majorities in the Legislature just before his second term began, he was unable to reduce spending that essentially remained flat during his second term. Revenues continued to be constrained, and while he tried to offset this with strategic reductions in overfunded accounts, clearly that strategy couldn’t last forever.

Bossier school officials flunk ESA test

Are the members of the Bossier Parish School Board and Superintendent Jason Rowland merely ignoramuses, or are they so craven as to put their own self-interests ahead of children’s needs?

Last week, the Board met – and in special session, no less, at increased taxpayer expense so triggered they were – to pass a resolution specifically opposing HB 745 by Republican Rep. Julie Emerson. The bill would create education savings accounts that could be used to pay for educational expenses, including attendance of nonpublic schools but not home schooled, phased in over three years starting next academic year. Upper-middle-income and higher families would receive 55 percent of the state’s per student contribution to local schools, others would receive 80 percent, and for those families with children with disabilities each would receive 160 percent. Any funds raised locally by a local education agency would remain unaffected.

Yet ultimately the Board voted unanimously (Republican Sherri Pool being absent) for the resolution, which was full of dubious claims easily rebutted. Unfortunately, financial statistics about education notoriously are difficult to come by and often quite out-of-date. The federal government has some final numbers only as recently as 2021 and the state in aggregate form has others incredibly only up to academic year 2018. Still, some conclusions may be drawn from these and likely relational rankings and other comparisons haven’t changed a whole lot in the present.

Good bill to do little to discourage panhandling

The concept is sound, but the Legislature has a tricky road ahead if it wants to pass a statewide law to ban attempted panhandling that, if successful, by definition will do little to curb the practice.

HB 97 by Republican state Rep. Dixon McMakin would make panhandling illegal on all public roads in the state. Current statute bars this only on interstate highways and points of entry and exit, which practically doesn’t happen since panhandlers populate areas where traffic speed is extremely slow as that’s the objective: grift from vehicle occupants, which can’t be done unless vehicles are basically not moving.

This extension threads a very narrow needle eyelet, given Supreme Court decisions of the past decade. Essentially, the Court has ruled that panhandling can’t be banned because it’s annoying – which it is – as it is an exercise of free speech. Thus, grounds to regulate this behavior in any way must rest on other criteria, such as public safety for both those in vehicles and those in and around the road.

Easter Sunday, 2024

This column publishes five days weekly after 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 Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is 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 Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Sunday, Mar. 31 being Easter, I invite you to explore this link.

LA families to win with school choice bills

Louisiana finally has a chance to get it right with school vouchers, while opponents to the idea keep getting it wrong, research shows.

Currently, HB 745 by Republicans state Rep. Julie Emerson and SB 313 by GOP state Sen. Rick Edmonds have started advancing through the Legislature. Each would provide for education savings accounts (ESAs) for families to choose to spend on nonpublic elementary and secondary education rather than enroll their children into public schools. It would start by offering transition of students in one of the existing three voucher programs based upon quality of last public school or attended or assigned, family income, and exceptionalities, followed a year later by expanding to all middle-lower income and below households, and then a year later inviting all families. It would not reimburse families for home schooling.

While the House bill heads to the floor, the Senate bill will take a detour to review finances. That is of some concern, as wildly varying estimates have come forth for new added expenses, mainly in fiscal 2028-29 and beyond. The difficulty in coming up with a reasonably accurate estimate lies in so many indeterminacies. For example, as the bill would pay out to upper-middle-class and above families (defined as 250 percent of the federal poverty line or higher) only 55 percent of the money it sends per student without exceptionalities to public schools, 80 percent to others below that, and 160 percent for students with exceptionalities, private schools would have to make a judgment call on tuition. Taking into account demand and supply curves and incremental costs, with this potential new revenue available they want to set a price point to maximize profit, which could mean lowering their tuition to grab a lot more students, or even raising it that may attract fewer but as the ESA amount would buttress family finances this may retain most.

Uncertain legality threatens BC charter review

Legally impaired from the start, Bossier City’s Charter Review Commission finds itself hurtling towards a politicized and suspect outcome that may cost taxpayers dearly.

The panel was born of the desires of four Bossier City councilor graybeards – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby – plus their lapdog newcomer Republican Vince Maggio to scuttle term limits, as a reaction to a successful petition drive to impose retroactive three-term limits on city elected officials. It ran afoul of a legal technicality, so organizers are out there again with another attempt plus another couple of measures upon which they report they are making steady progress in signature collection.

However, while possible it’s not probable that enough signatures will have been collected and certified to meet a Jun. 19 deadline to have the measures appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. The timing is important, not only because if the petitioners are too slow – even as it appears almost certain they will have enough signatures to make the Dec. 7 ballot, which is due Oct. 14 – then next years’ city elections won’t have limits in place.

Conservatives win, lose in tough LA environments

For Louisiana’s Republicans when facing unfavorable local electoral environments, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t, results from elections from this weekend show.

It worked for Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis, who in facing an electorate about five-eighths black registrants not only won reelection but expanded his majority. Friday, who is white and while he runs as an independent has Republican support including that of a fundraising bundling group designed to steer nationally donations to Republican candidates, bested two black Democrat candidates, one of whom was Democrat former mayor Jamie Mayo whom he deposed four years ago.

All that needs to be known about this election comes from 14 precincts, 11 through 24. With seven-eighths black registrants in these, Ellis pulled down 37 percent of the vote and even won two of them. Considering that he ran up majorities in and around 90 percent in precincts just as heavily populated with white registrants, which also turned out at twice the rate or better than these others, it was no contest.

LA Democrats seem willing to break election law

What is a woman? Louisiana Democrats might start having to explain themselves on this as their answer might endorse breaking state election law.

Across the state this Saturday, registered Republicans and Democrats will cast ballots for their respective party’s governing institutions, both for parish executive committees and state central committee. State law sets some parameters for this process for recognized political parties of a certain size, i.e. the two major parties.

Statute for composition of the state central committees gives parties two choices. One, they can follow the somewhat-structured R.S. 18:443.1, which mandates that the SCC have 210 seats with its members elected from each of the 105 state House districts, where males run separately and females run separately. Two, R.S. 18:443.2 mandates broadly that a governor of the party must serve on its SCC but the rest of members selection is left up to the party so long as it’s not inconsistent with state law.

Left refuses to see its causing LA depopulation

A recent musing about Louisiana population loss contains a lot bathos, signifying the difficulty, if not unwillingness, that the state’s leftist institutions have in accepting what’s plain to everybody else.

Last week, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran a piece about the latest 2023 census numbers, which show most Louisiana parishes lost population. The state as a whole lost over 14,000 people in 2023, bring the total loss from compared to 2015 to nearly 120,000 even as the country as a whole, and most states, grew in numbers. In fact, the state’s 0.31 percent loss trailed in percentage terms only New York, and of the seven states that did lose population, four were among the largest blue states, with purple Pennsylvania barely slipping and only West Virigina among red states joining Louisiana.

Only Ascension, Beauregard, Bossier, Calcasieu, De Soto, East Feliciana, Iberville, Lafayette, Livingston, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Vermillion, and West Baton Rouge gained – a few barely – and none over one percent. Metropolitan statistical areas were a mixed bag: energy-intensive areas Lafayette and Lake Charles and northshore Hamond and Slidell-Covington-Mandeville, plus Baton Rouge eked out gains but Shreveport-Bossier City, Monroe, Alexandria, Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, and New Orleans-Metairie shrunk. In fact, New Orleans led the country in MSA slumping at 1.15 percent, while Houma was fifth worst at 0.85 percent, Alexandria 16^th worst at 0.60 percent, Shreveport 36^th worst at 0.43 percent, and Monroe 46^th worst at 0.34 percent. Hammond’s 0.92 percent growth was best in the state and 92^nd best nationwide.

Louisiana’s rural areas fared even worse than its urban, while overall suburban areas held their own. That 50 parishes lost population flummoxed the Advocate, which went on an extensive expedition in search of explanations why since the 2020 census this had happened.

Natural disasters clearly had a role, but this masked some notable divergences. For example, Lake Charles was coming back from its travails, but Houma wasn’t. And obviously a lot of places hadn’t had adverse weather events strike them in the past three years.

So, setting aside idiosyncratic elements, it had to be policy, and to her credit Alison Plyer, the longtime chief demographer of New Orleans’ Data Center, hit upon that when queried by the reporter. But, as students will tend to do in answering essay questions, they may guess correctly right answer but provide the wrong reasons to explain it.

Plyer fell victim to this in two ways, although one was only a partial bogey. She observed the poorer health statistics reflected by Louisianans compared to almost every other state, which would lead to earlier deaths offsetting births. Set aside, of course, that this is a temporary effect; changes in cohort life spans would influence extremely marginally overall population so long as the birth cohorts remained constant, so an ongoing fall caused by shorter lifespans would make sense only in the context of a sudden drop in life expectancy that isn’t occurring (even if a relatively rapid one such as during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic happens, it also happened elsewhere, so relative change among states would be extremely marginal).

Yet that shouldn’t be happening in Louisiana, using the left’s assumptions, because Medicaid expansion! Now almost eight years old, that was supposed to provide all sorts of additional health care people were missing to improve their lives. In reality, a large minority of its new clients years ago simply dropped their private insurance (or their employers did it when expansion rolled out) to get a new freebie, so it’s not like they didn’t have health care insurance already. If, of course, they could access Medicaid, with its limited providers and a lowest common denominator approach that degraded the quality of care. And while you can throw health care at people, you can’t make them live healthy lives that would decrease their health care usage. So, for the extra $450 million or so a year Louisiana taxpayers pony up to subsidize other people’s health care, there’s very little bang for the buck or explanatory power for population loss (if anything, hanging out a new benefit not available in nearly all of the fastest-growing states should attract residents).

But Plyer also made a very ignorant statement. Not her observation that higher educational attainment helps to drive population growth, but that state taxpayer subsidization falling a third since 2008 on a per higher education student basis indicates that Louisiana spent less money on tertiary education. In fact, in fiscal year 2008 $2.766 billion for 201,557 students was budgeted for higher education or $13,723 per student, while in FY 2024 that will be $3.453 billion for 217,618 students or $15,867 per student, an increase of 15.6 percent. The hoary and tired contention that Louisiana has “disinvested” in higher education is an exhausted myth.

Yes, policy is the explanation, but not derived from the blind alleys in the article. It’s very simple: the cause is Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ big spending, tax raising, benefit boosting (such as Medicaid expansion), social justice pandering regime, insufficiently resisted by a Republican Legislature short on leadership that only deigned to rein in Edwards’ worst attempted excesses. It discouraged producers from producing, if not their staying in the state, and encouraged wasteful spending, criminal coddling, and more people jumping on the wagon. It not only led to depopulation, but fewer jobs than when he took office, anemic personal income growth that barely outpaced inflation, crime rates heading higher at an above average pace, and a coarsening culture that pandered to ideological special interests.

And, of course, it was the three central cities with Democrat mayors and solid Democrat majorities on their city councils – New Orleans, Shreveport (although it now has a GOP mayor), and Alexandria – which were among the worst performing local jurisdictions. However, notice how Lafayette and Lake Charles, run by Republicans, bucked the trend.

Those shortcomings are the wages of liberalism and are the kinds of things that drive people away – but leftist institutions aren’t going to admit that and will try to find any lame excuse to deflect from that. What’s obvious to everybody else they refuse to see, which makes the musings in that article largely irrelevant, if not entirely counterproductive to reversing the state’s depopulation trend.

Early vote numbers signal advantage Whitehorn

Early voting statistics from Caddo Parish show Republican sheriff candidate former Shreveport City Councilor John Nickelson well may be doing what he has to in order to win this weekend’s election, but it might not be enough.

Nickelson and Democrat former city Chief Administrative Office Henry Whitehorn have locked horns for the position now twice, with the pair emerging from the field in the general election where Nickleson had led Whitehorn 45 percent to 35 percent, and Republican candidates overall receiving 53 percent. Then almost five weeks later famously they virtually tied, with the certified total showing Whitehorn up by one vote. However, a rubber match became necessary when courts found too many irregularities in election conduct to make the actual result indeterminate.

Whitehorn closed the gap because turnout differential swung in his favor, where Republican-favoring precinct turnout fell 5.3 percent while Democrat-favoring precinct turnout increased 1.2 percent, even as overall turnout dropped 2.4 percent. If Nickelson could mitigate each of those changes even slightly, he would win, and increasing base turnout seemed the way to do it based upon the trends had gone adversely for him as a result of falling turnout.

Monroe race to see if Ellis portends trend

By this time next week, we’ll know if independent Monroe Mayor Friday Ellis was a canary in the coal mine for Democrats or just lightning in a bottle.

In 2020, Ellis unexpectedly defeated Democrat former long-time Mayor Jamie Mayo and other candidates to win as a white candidate in a solidly black-majority electorate. However, that may have had more to do with Mayo, who is black, than anything else, whose sometimes odd actions made white voters increasingly suspicious of his leadership and black voters less enthusiastic about him.

On election day – which occurred in July rather than March because of Wuhan coronavirus pandemic restrictions and which might have affected turnout – Ellis won in a 63 percent black constituency. White voter turnout appeared substantially higher than black, although overall it was a healthy over 40 percent. Still, in precincts where blacks comprised at least 90 percent of the vote, Ellis picked up 15 percent while Mayo barely garnered two-thirds, demonstrating greater crossover appeal for white candidates than traditionally.

Keep LA away from flawed ranked choice voting

A Louisiana Senate panel has sent on its way to needed passage a bill emulating law in several states that will help to ensure more coherent governance and more faithful translation of aggregate voter preferences.

SB 101 by Republican state Sen. Blake Miguez would prohibit ranked choice voting (RCV) for any election in Louisiana (save votes cast by military personnel overseas as by federal law in order to provide an “instant runoff”). There are many varieties to the concept, but basically it involves an electoral structure where all candidates by or regardless of party affiliation (if any) run together in an initial or only election, and then lower-ranking candidates are eliminated in either vote computation or by ballot redistribution.

Louisiana with its blanket primary actually uses a very diluted form of this. The initial general election eliminates all but two candidates by vote computation where the two highest then compete in a runoff election, unless one candidate receives a majority.

End traffic laws more money grabs than for safety

Finally, Louisiana has a real chance to end a pair of burdensome laws dealing with vehicle operation that masquerade as safety measures but in reality exist primarily to fatten government coffers.

In 2017, then 2019, then 2020, and now this year Republican state Rep. Larry Bagley has tried to alter, if not jettison, non-commercial periodic vehicle inspections except in cases where federal law requires it for air pollution controls. This year’s HB 344 does that. Some states don’t require any inspections, while about two-thirds enforce an emissions check at some point, mostly at transfer. Few follow Louisiana’s model by asking for full safety checks.

That makes sense, given the considerable advances in vehicle safety and that public safety officers still will have the authority to cite motorists driving in visibly unsafe vehicles (inspections only address these items). The only real beneficiaries of the state’s current testing regime are the state and contracted testers, who rake $10 a year off owners for the exercise (and some testers merely go through the motions anyway).

4 years in, recall LA pandemic villains, heroes

Four years ago, the largest single mistake in U.S. public health history began its commencement, leaving former Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards to manufacture the most unsavory portion of his legacy, along with others.

With a paucity of information about the Wuhan coronavirus in mid-March, 2020, it’s difficult to fault the extreme steps taken initially over the next few months. These comprised of closing schools, closing of all but the smallest public gatherings, restricting commercial activities, and requiring social distancing including face coverings.

Yet within three months it had become clear enough that much of this was or had been ineffective. Because the virus was quite selective in who got hit hardest – those with co-morbidities, followed by the elderly – the overwhelming majority of the public, and especially children, would face no more than an inconvenient respiratory virus of relatively short duration. In this time span, it became clear that these punitive measures Edwards imposed for the vast majority cost much more than any benefits that might accrue – learning and developmental loss among children, tremendous economic dislocation, and assaults on personal liberties.

Landry address brings welcome new tone, ideas

What a breath of fresh air Republican Gov. Jeff Landry brought to Louisiana with his first State of the State Address.

Over the past eight years, Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards used these annual opportunities to harangue Louisianans, telling them through a litany of bad policy preferences drawing his rhetorical support that they had to shape up by doing this, that, or the other – and whatever these things were, they were not appealing to our better instincts, but delivered as orders from an overseer to his chattel with government-centric options leading the way. Orwellian language abounded, with tax increases termed as “revenue enhancements,” increased spending as “investments,” and depopulation, declining job numbers, and more able-bodied adults sitting out the labor force as markers of economic success.

By great contrast, Landry’s maiden address discussed how government was to facilitate individuals’ abilities to enrich their life prospects by reserving its activities to its proper sphere. While he didn’t go into details, he drew upon a governing philosophy alien to the liberal populism of Edwards and his predecessors spanning nearly a previous century – keeping the citizenry safe from deviant human behavior and the vagaries of nature (by using evidence-based approaches), building and maintaining cost-effective and value-driven infrastructure, providing economic incentives that lead to people making choices for productive behavior that contributes to improving society’s overall well-being, and limiting redistribution of what government takes from producers only to those whose physical circumstances or paucity of innate abilities or whom have suffered genuine bad luck, who cannot contribute in that fashion.

Preferring to draw upon broader themes with strategic use of data to support his views, he drew attention to three policy areas, all of which exemplified his approach that in policy-making government should empower people by not empowering itself. In elementary and secondary education, which he identified as the prequel to economic improvement, noting how the state ranks lowly (among the bottom ten) while spending more per pupil than many states, he advocated for a diminution of the government monopoly model that narrows families’ educational options, constrains teachers, and encourages faddish orthodoxies at the expense of real learning. He backed education savings accounts, where money follows the student, and enhancing choice as the means by which to accomplish this transformation.

Landry also commented upon the state’s stifling approach to occupational licensing, calling upon streamlining and jettisoning unnecessary rules. The state regulates more jobs than any other state (as well as making it difficult to transfer licenses from elsewhere) and according to one watchdog organization in overall terms ranks sixth most onerous. And, he emphasized that the state’s property insurance struggles could be solved through lifting unnecessarily burdensome regulation.

However, Landry sees the degree of corrective state policy as beyond statute. In addition to these policy preferences, he also called upon the Legislature to establish parameters for a constitutional convention next year, a document he sees as too protective of certain special interests that needlessly complicates and constricts governing.

As well, Landry noted how some quarters – read leftists and Democrats whose rearguard actions over the past two decades to preserve liberal populism in governance have been breached in 2024’s first two months with the crevasse ever widening – complained that his policy changes, by executive action and legislative agreement, supposedly moved too quickly, to which he had an answer: when so far behind (implying that these forces had caused that), you had to run faster to catch up.

Landry appears to have recognized from the moment of his early general election win two important things about executive success: move quickly and use a big majority, which he had at the polls and has in the Legislature, to make big changes. Whatever momentum loss he may have experienced from the first reapportionment special session that disgruntled some of his GOP legislative allies by having to inflict a partisan loss upon their party, he regained quickly in the second special session focusing on crime solutions. His address presaged more big moves to come, and more heartburn for his ideological opponents.

Jerry Parnell Payne, 1942-2024

In the world of politics, Jerry Payne didn’t particularly care to advertise his own role; he just wanted to get results and usually did.

Anybody involved in electioneering in northwest Louisiana over the past few decades knew of Jerry. He first entered politics through his lifelong and perhaps best friend, Republican former Gov. Buddy Roemer, when Roemer started his political career through election as a delegate to the 1973 Constitutional Convention. Jerry would continue to work with Roemer as the latter ascended the ladder up to the governorship.

Actually, their initial collaboration came in the field of data management. For the first quarter-century or so of his work life, Jerry served as an administrator mainly dealing with systems for tracking and processing financial transactions that would send him out of state for years at a time. For that reason, he never took a role in the Roemer Administration even though he was asked as a significant figure in Roemer’s defeat of Democrat former Gov. Edwin Edwards.

Session must plug holes in LA voting integrity

With Super Tuesday in the rearview mirror, Louisiana’s presidential primary and other elections straight ahead, and the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature to start soon, now is a good time for Louisiana to review its ballot integrity as other states surpass it on this account.

Historically, the state has done well compared to others in terms of votes cast under the name of an individual being cast by that individual, who is a citizen residing at the address registered. It was one of the early adopters of photo identification and positive identification upon registering and at the polls.

However, while one can register to vote online or mail that mandates eventual photographic identification preferably in the form of a driver’s license or special identification card (which require other documents assuring an accurate identity) also acceptable is any photo ID and some other documentation containing name and address.  Presentation of verified photo ID also isn’t needed when registering at a site that dispenses government benefits and the registerer also receives those benefits.

Events, data validating Landry troop deployment

Critics, including intraparty ones, of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s dispatch of state National Guard troops to Texas find their political positioning more tenuous after a recent spate of high-profile arrests of illegal aliens.

Two weeks ago college student Riley Laken in Georgia was murdered, allegedly by an illegal alien (an incident which Democrat Pres. Joe Biden has yet to address even as he promotes legislation named after a habitual criminal), focusing attention on criminal activity by illegal aliens. Under Biden, the U.S. southern border has become particularly porous, with such crossings up 277 percent under Biden compared to predecessor Republican Donald Trump. Unfortunately, this jump during Biden’s third year in office has led to a 257 percent increase in criminal noncitizen arrests compared to Trump’s third year in office; a 319 percent increase in assault, battery, and domestic violence; a 470 percent increase in burglary, robbery, larceny, theft, and fraud; and homicides and manslaughter going from 2 to 62, a 3,000 percent increase.

In response, Landry sent Louisiana troops to aid Texas in its Operation Lone Star, designed to interdict illegal aliens from crossing over state borders that has attracted like support from about a dozen states, for about a month. The estimated cost of this could reach as much as $3 million.

Make deals to reapportion LA Supreme Court

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s special legislative session turned out to be a massive success for him, save one goal – to reapportion the state’s Supreme Court. For that to happen during the regular session that starts next week, a little transactional politics may have to occur.

Currently, the seven districts suffer from severe malapportionment. Twice Landry, who has wanted this reapportionment for years, found that part of his 2024 special session calls thwarted by Senate Republican majorities.

The first try was somewhat rushed, provoked criticism from two sitting justices, and had the full Senate, which has a GOP supermajority, stall on it. The second attempt produced a somewhat better map that shifted the Second District, which will be open later this year, over to the east and down the Mississippi River that triggered somewhat less criticism for its rending of parishes (while still doing quite a bit of meandering and damaging, splitting Ouachita, Rapides, East Baton Rouge, and Lafayette Parishes), but GOP senators in committee torpedoed it.

Shreveport Council Democrats aim at Arceneaux

Shreveport Democrats’ plan to have the city’s electorate dump Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux is fully afoot as they play Russian roulette with the city’s water and sewerage system.

The city remains under a consent decree that will demand hundreds of millions in spending to satisfy. Currently, $310.6 million worth of expenditures deemed critical need completion – most of which the city doesn’t have.

It doesn’t because of voter hesitancy triggered by the untrustworthy performance that featured many questionable spending choices of Democrat former Mayor Adrian Perkins, who on three occasions proposed large bond issues that included requests to fund water and sewerage. Out of around $600 million proposed, all of which involved property tax increases, only a $70.65 million estimated amount that ended up tacking on 2.5 mils for public safety made it onto the ballot and gained voter approval.

Left misleads on LA rebalancing criminal laws

As most of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s criminal justice reforms as legislation heads to his desk for his signature into law, Louisiana’s political left is working overtime to cast aspersions on measures reversing the ethos behind changes predecessor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards had enticed, despite data showing very much such assertions are baseless.

In essence, Landry’s increases severity of sentences for some crimes, for 17-year-olds convicted of some crimes, and lengthens incarceration time for many convicts. Edwards’ had done the opposite, on the theory that the existing measures were cost ineffective, or that any reduction in crime was more than offset by costs involved. Indeed, more vocal advocates of the so-called “smart on crime” approach actually argued that you could have it both ways, reduced crime and costs.

At the very least, the left wishes to delegitimize Landry’s restoration with claims along the lines that being “tougher” on crime won’t make much of a difference, if not make matters worse, and certainly would cost more. A typical leftist view on the philosophy behind his package is “there is no firm empirical evidence that confirms” that “more stringent punitive measures [are] a criminal deterrent.”

Another Supreme Court map failure benefits Cox

The soap opera concerning possible reapportionment of Louisiana’s Supreme Court districts looks to spill over to a third try in the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature, caught up in electoral politics directly affecting at least one declared candidate for the open Second District seat later this year.

At the First Extraordinary Session, the Senate refused to move a bill that would have accomplished this. It did so again this week during the Second Extraordinary Session, although under somewhat different circumstances.

Crucial to understanding the machinations involved, consider the context. Nothing legally requires the state to do this. As judicial elections cover offices not considered policy-making and therefore not necessary to represent constituencies, neither equal apportionment nor guarantees that district arrangements not impair the ability of minority groups to elect candidates of their own choosing apply to judicial reapportionment questions. Thus, Louisiana’s current environment of seven districts with enormous population districts and just one majority-minority district in a state where about a third of the population claims black ancestry is perfectly constitutional.

LA should prohibit preying on pregnant girls

If Louisiana wants to boost parental rights, protect some lives, and make Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom waste some of his money, it should join other states in making criminal activity that attempts to spirit unemancipated minor girls out of state to receive abortions.

This week, Newsom announced that he would dip into his own leftover campaign funds – perhaps a bit prematurely, as he collected these dollars in defense against a recall petition he successfully beat back, but another appears on the way – banked by an affiliated organization to fund media buys in several states that have, in the case of Idaho since last year, or are considering laws these laws. He already ran some in Tennessee and says he’ll spend millions.

Recognize this, of course, as a last-minute ploy to sell himself as a replacement for Democrat Pres. Joe Biden, whose low polling numbers and consistent running behind and significantly Republican former Pres. Donald Trump in the polls have increased the chances that party powerbrokers will try to stage an intervention to get him to desist in attempted reelection. An ad or two appearing in conservative states isn’t going to make any difference in whether laws of this nature pass or fail, but it does raise his profile.

Legislature needs to add sore loser provision

A major tweak that the Louisiana Legislature should make to its recent changes to candidate qualifying for certain offices would prevent “sore losers” from trying to game the system.

Earlier this year, the state instituted semi-closed primary elections to determine partisan general election candidates, essentially nominating them for office. Starting in 2026, this will apply to all federal legislative candidates as well as members of plenary statewide executive and judicial bodies. The law will make parties award nominations thus eligibility to run in the general election using their labels, where they can be joined by candidates not from a recognized party – currently the two major plus Greens, Libertarian, and Independent – on the general election ballot. In these primaries, only party members and any no party registrants who choose only on party’s ballot may participate.

But the law doesn’t prevent someone from running in a party primary who loses then to run in the general election under any label other than recognized parties’ or as no party. This subverts the idea of preventing other parties’ registrants to determine a party’s sole general election participant, even if the loser runs under another or without a label.

BC cuts tiny part of venture capitalist losses

The chickens continue to come home to roost over Bossier City’s profligacy of the past three decades as its agenda of government as economic development machine through interventions into the local economy with taxpayer dollars cascade from failure to failure.

Recently, headlines about how the city has squandered wealth and opportunity have focused on the duplicative Walter O. Bigby Carriageway and provision of expensive recreation for a tiny minority of city residents or for non-residents while discouraging other residents from using these facilities. But while these come from relatively recent poor decisions, there are some huge expenses with little payoff in the past often forgotten.

At over $65 million in cost, the Brookshire Grocery Arena has turned into a perennial money-loser. Since its opening in 2000, it had only three years where it turned a profit, the last in 2006. Its total losses through 2022 have been a startling $9.655 million. And while some of its desperate boosters (echoing arguments made about the millions of dollars going into city park facilities restricted to out-of-towner use) claim it can make that up through taxes paid by visitors to arena events, it’s laughable that non-residents to arena events during their trips could have bought in the city goods worth $386.2 million, the break-even point.

Landry implements crucially-good ITEP reforms

Given the bad hand Louisiana’s Constitution dealt him, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry did his best and largely successfully to fix problems created in the past few years with the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program.

ITEP reflects a constitutional power defined by the mostly gubernatorial-appointed Board of Commerce and Industry and the Department of Economic Development which allows it to exempt manufacturing firms from property taxes from value added to property used for discrete projects that create new or expand operations. However, the Constitution vests the final power in the hand of the governor whether to approve whatever emerges, so he can create the conditions for acceptance through an executive order, in essence saying that unless requests forwarded to him meet standards he articulates, he won’t approve these.

Historically, such supervision was minimal, leading to almost any project within the constitutional boundaries meeting approval, until Landry’s predecessor Democrat John Bel Edwards radically changed the rules, and for the worse. Understanding the negative impact begins with acknowledging that ITEP exists because of Louisiana’s confiscatory property tax rates insofar as these apply to business.

Changes only can improve LA public defense

Opposition to changing governance of Louisiana’s indigent defense from an appointed board to a gubernatorial designee generated more heat than light and shouldn’t derail an improvement to a system as yet never quite fixed.

SB 8 by Republican state Sen. Mike Reese may end up the most controversial bill of the Legislature’s Second Extraordinary Session of 2024. Its initial hearing dragged on for hours with support voiced for it by State Public Defender Remy Starns and a few others, but most of the time was taken by opponents, many connected to public defense.

The bill would remove the Louisiana Public Defender Board from policy-making, leaving only an advisory role, transferring that to the public defender. Rather than he be an appointee of the Board, the governor with Senate confirmation would make the appointment, for two years. This would put contracting and chief district defender hiring solely in the hands of the public defender, among other things, rather than by the Board which currently has five gubernatorial appointees (from each appellate district), four from the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and one each from the leaders of each state legislative chamber, serving overlapping four-year terms.

Data point to Summer EBT as unneeded in LA

Louisiana’s political left has a full-court press on to try to score political points over the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration decision not to dole out more cash to lower-income households with children – all the while ignoring data that supports that decision.

Liberal politicians and special interests have criticized the choice not to participate in the Summer EBT program, which gives cash benefits of $40 a school-aged child for three months in the summer. It’s estimated that it would have shoveled $71 million to state families out of federal monies.

Of course, that attitude acts as if this is free money, when in fact Louisiana taxpayers will bear the costs through their federal taxes, an increase in federal debt that they eventually will have to pay back with interest, and/or with a reduction in services elsewhere. Further, plenty of other programs exist to address food needs, including a couple geared specifically toward school children in the summer that operate far more efficiently than the Summer EBT design, as well as more general programs that cover the same clientele base, principally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that in Louisiana pays a family of two $535 a month.

Over execution, Hollywood may help LA save cash

As with most candidates for governor last year, the winner Republican Gov. Jeff Landry disappointed on the issue of Louisiana’s Motion Picture Investors tax credit, but maybe he’s hit on a less-direct way to skin a cat over the issue of expanding capital punishment options.

The film tax credit is notorious for its waste of taxpayer dollars, costing the state typically hundreds of millions of dollars annually with only a fraction returning to the treasury in the form of income taxes on those employed in production, sales taxes for good related to filming, and the like. It functions as a form of corporate welfare, which largely goes into the pockets of out-of-state interests, that no other industry in the state enjoys to that degree. The latest, most optimistic statistics available show it returns 23 cents on the dollar while costing $13,300 for each job, mostly part-time, “created.”

Gubernatorial candidates, if anything, with the exception of GOP ex-state Rep. Richard Nelson, campaigned in favor of the giveaway. That included Landry, even though his ally now Speaker of the House Republican Phillip DeVillier had tried to amend the legislation last year to extend the program to gradually wean the state off it.

Tax fatigued voters may doom Bossier renewal

In April, most Bossier City residents will be solicited to slap upon themselves again a large amount of property taxes, and to a smaller degree parish residents outside of municipalities face the same. As a result, chances are good that at least some portion of current taxes will be rejected.

All of Bossier City, Bossier Parish, and the majority part of both encapsulated in the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District have cued up property tax renewals on the Apr. 27 ballot. The State Bond Commission last week approved for the date a pair of city levies for 8.32 and 2.71 mils for public safety, the parish levy 7.43 mils for the library system, and the district levy of 1.54 for general operations and capital outlay.

The four are for ten years, although the district’s starts in 2025 while the other two wouldn’t renew until 2026. If all were approved, city property owners with a $225,000 primary residential property within the district boundaries would reestablish onto themselves $350.88 annually in property taxes; those not in the boundaries would add back $327.78; and outside a municipality in the district would sign on again to $134.55, and those only in the parish would re-up to $111.45. (Parish Administrator Butch Ford’s shack, which permits him to evade legal prohibition against his employment, is valued so low, below the homestead exemption, that his taxes paid won’t change regardless of the outcome of the parish and district votes.)

Citizens within and among these various jurisdictions have reason for skepticism in renewing these taxes. In the case of Bossier City, it would be general profligate spending, in part on luxuries that serve few citizens such as maintaining tennis courts for a private sector operator that hardly any city residents use; high-dollar recreation facilities residents are discouraged, if not prohibited, from using; and huge capital outlay projects that have low overall value such as the duplicative Walter O. Bigby Carriageway.

This has put the city into a debt bind. At the end of 2022, it had $434.5 million in debt, with this declining slowly over the past couple of years. With an estimated mid-2022 population of 62,971, that left it at $6,900 per capita, or in terms of government activities (excluding enterprise activities, in this instance the city-run water and sewerage system) $3,400 per capita. These are the highest levels of any major city in Louisiana, which in part explains why the two major investment services rank the quality of its debt as only in the third-highest and fourth-highest categories (high quality with low credit risk, but with some susceptibility to long-term risks).

Having frittered away dollars on nonessential, if not questionable, items has had consequences such as government activities long-term debt interest of about $9 million paid out (its business activities also cost another $5 million in interest) in 2022 that just a portion of which if freed could back things like firefighter pensions or pay raises for city employees, particularly in public safety. Ironically, adequate funding of public safety is the issue that probably won’t lead to a citizens’ revolt at the ballot box on city millages because those address public safety, as city fathers decades ago clearly must have envisioned since they cleverly tied these levies explicitly to the most important function local government can have.

That fact will discourage citizens from voting down the items in order to teach a lesson to the likes of City Council graybeards Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby who oversaw the fiscal mismanagement over recent decades. After all, even as graybeard actions have precluded better pay for public safety, removing the millages would mean no pay and no job for many first responders.

A bit more vulnerable is the parish levy, not only because library operations aren’t nearly as central to parish citizens’ lives – likely the majority of them, aside from early voting, never have set foot in or connected to the Internet sites of Bossier Parish Libraries – but also as the parish’s Police Jury has engaged in a series of legally questionable, if not outright illegal, acts in regards to the library. In particular:

• It has had jurors serve on the Library Board of Control since 2016. State law is somewhat ambiguous about the legality of this practice – in fact, Bossier is the only parish for which information is readily available on the web that does this – but an attorney general’s opinion on that question soon will be released.
• At one point, it appointed Ford as head of libraries on an interim basis for several months, which unambiguously broke the law as he did not under state statute have the proper qualifications.
• Most recently, it appointed all 12 jurors to the Board. Even as it appears they will meet in a kind of rotation fashion, that violates state statute that limits membership to as many as seven parish residents.
• And, even as some jurors allege they needed to take over the Board because of problems they refuse to specify were endemic to the library system that only they could solve – which rings entirely hollow since jurors were board members for many years before making the board an all-juror affair – if one of those problems was unsupervised availability of graphic materials to children, the problem continues.

These kinds of shenanigans might induce the electorate to pull the plug on library funding, which would still leave around 100 mils of taxation for the parish that could be reallocated for library purposes if so desired. Still, the magnitude of the money that would disappear, as well as arguments that the library does serve school children and others, likely will save the day for this renewal.

None of that applies to the district levy. Few parish residents use the park (and have to pay to get in) yet most get taxed for it, and many of the few hundred property owners to which it is highly relevant since it foists land use controls upon them who pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to it depending upon the activities in which they engage are nonplussed at it. The latter especially have had to endure years of evasive and opaque management accentuated by a series of questionable decisions by its Board of Commissioners and its recently-departed member and (illegally employed) executive director Robert Berry, from favoritism to elected officials who appoint them to resisting accountability to wasting tens of thousands of dollars in fruitless legal expenses and more on grandiose, unrealistic plans (which the renewal still advocates, as it in part would be dedicated to operating a zoo the conceptualization and intentions of which have been thoroughly botched).

That and the size of the millage and the election date conspire to put this renewal in real jeopardy. Already asked to approve about 20 mils, voters might think they can afford to drop 7.5 percent of it that they would see the 1.54 mils as not being missed, even as that comprises over half of park revenues for 2022. And while the election date helps the other levies’ chances of renewal, because as very likely these four items will complete the ballot’s entirety which will disproportionately attract to the polls the beneficiaries and families and friends of most of the items (i.e., Bossier City public safety employees and Bossier Parish library employees) in favor of these, with close to zero direct beneficiaries of the district more than offset by a number of disgruntled landowners, this hurts the chances of that millage passing (although it could get another shot later in the year if this failed).

Commissioners seem to recognize this and have been trying to engage landowners in a public relations campaign to improve their image. They may need to extend that to the public, who will see their ballots asking for taxes for something most never have heard of, and of those who have many will have heard negative things, that would seem easy for government to do without. Of course, a large PR campaign will cost money of which the district has none, being in the hole $92,650 which would have been nearly three times as much at the end of 2022 if not for an unspecified one-time insurance payout that year.

While each of the three entities smartly asked for renewing at the current millages being paid rather that at the higher amounts that the measures originally authorized, that may not save the District’s request from tax-fatigued voters. Rejection of that would send a signal to the District at present as well as to Bossier City and the Parish for the future that voters will take only so much misrule before they start casting retribution.