You mess with the bull, you get the horns, politicians in New Orleans as the city comes to potential reckoning through tough love.
The saga started at the beginning of the month when a grand jury out of thin air lodged an indictment against Republican Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill. It charged her with multiple counts of malfeasance and public intimidation, whereupon a special prosecutor was appointed. The basis for that came weeks earlier when the city attempted to contravene new statute that abolished one of the clerks of court by merging it into another, but was shot down by the judiciary. Murrill had warned city officials that those actions violated state law and threatened legal action to remove officials from office if they proceeded.
That indictment was halted almost immediately by the state Supreme Court, citing perverse legal logic, conflicts of interest, and procedural errors. It said the case essentially was dead in the water on the basis that Murrill’s actions amounted to her discharging legally her duties.
That in hand, a couple of weeks later the city threw in the towel, asking for dismissal from Democrat Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams. However, in the interim the series of events leading up to and after the sham indictment came under question for illegal coordination contrary to law in steering the indictment. As a result, at a news conference on another matter both Murrill and GOP Gov. Jeff Landry made clear the matter wasn’t over and that Williams, Democrat Mayor Helena Moreno, and others could face criminal charges
Supposedly, a criminal complaint had been forwarded to federal authorities. Murrill said it was necessary because of allegations that the jury had been led to produce the fraudulent indictment and this manipulation of the justice system needed to be discouraged.
None of this had to happen. First, the attempt by Moreno and the City Council to subvert the law was, to any outside observer, completely asinine. But if they had just stopped there, that would have ended matters. Instead, they cheerlead Williams taking up the indictments.
Their inanity perhaps began to dawn upon them when the city, plagued with poor fiscal management and deficit spending that has led it to desperate schemes such as gimmickry to advance rent payments for operation of the Caesars Superdome, had wanted to issue revenue bonds to plug gaps in a looming budget deficit, which requires State Bond Commission approval. That body, with representatives all of or appointees by Republican elected officials including Landry and Murrill signaled it would reject the request over concerns that revenues to pay off the bonds would come up short. Moreno then withdrew the request and claimed an alternative had been found, begging the question why the request had been made in the first place. And this after the city already is on the hook for over a hundred million dollars to the state.
This is punctuated by the point man on all of this, Williams, already in a different kind of debt. To help stem the city’s high violent crime rate, the state using its own resources has sent in state law enforcement and prosecutors. His spearheading the progress of the indictment, along with allegations he coached things along to secure the indictments, threatens dissolution of the agreement for extra law enforcement and prosecution aid.
Yet begging an even larger question, why did all of these elected officials so stupidly bite that hand that feeds them, leading to poisoning the well with those to whom they are supplicants? The answer lies in the general invalid moral certitude common to the political left spurred by one-party rule in the city.
No office in the city, not even School Board nor constables and judges, is not a Democrat. In fact, in the most recent elections for each office outside of the Council and mayor only five non-Democrats even ran. As for those city elections, Democrats either won the general election outright or in the case of runoffs two Democrats advanced. Even in the Legislature, there are no Republicans elected whose districts are completely within Orleans Parish.
A combination of voter learned helplessness that acquiesces to if not embraces leftist rule and GOP malaise has created this situation of a bubble existence that forms politicians who get too big for their britches but too clueless to understand their views and agenda are widely rejected outside the swamps of Orleans. They become so used to having their uncontested way in their little pond that they mistake this omnipotence for reality outside of it and so they think they can get their way regardless of elections and the law.
This mistake has reaped the whirlwind. Landry now threatens a special session that will place even more constraints on present Orleans government that will bring it into line more like other parishes in terms of offices per capita and even exert more control over city fiscal affairs, which he might not have felt necessary had city officials just taken their medicine and not blown up everything.
Hopefully, a little more essential right-sizing, if not greater state control over a failing city, will come of that. It’s part of the needed tough love to make Orleans officials understand that it’s they who put their city into a predicament and to shed ideology for reality to start correcting their misrule.
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