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.
